Cuneiform Digital Library Notes

A ‘composite seal’ is defined by one or more examples of the impressions made with the same seal. The aim of the current exercise is to incorporate composite seals based on seal impressions on Ur III tablets into the CDLI database so that it is readily possible to call up all of the seals with a particular impression. The primary difficulty is the sheer volume of material. At present, there are c. 100,000 administrative & legal tablets from this period listed in CDLI and roughly 25% of this have seal impressions. There are approximately 5,150 different composites seals – excluding for our discussion physical artifacts – currently listed for this period. However, each of these numbers is certain to change as work is done to standardize this huge amount of data, while at the same time new material is being added regularly, given that there are still very large numbers of Ur III unpublished administrative texts remaining under the watchful eyes of occasionally protective museum curators.

When I started work on the Ur III composite seals, they had been electronically sorted and tagged with a seal number based on their transcribed legends (Englund 2014). There had been some fine-tuning (for example, legends that were so poorly preserved that they were ambiguous had not been given numbers) but essentially it was an electronic sort, and reduction of multiple instances of legends to one each. From my perspective, this made my job a lot easier because it created a simple structure and because very roughly 70% of tablets with seals were correctly slotted into that structure.

I set about the task of improving the referencing of seals in the database by using two large-scale studies of seals: the doctoral dissertations of Tsouparopoulou (for Drehem) and Mayr (for Umma). These pieces of work were different in their approach to cataloguing the seals.

Tsouparopoulou’s Cambridge thesis, submitted in 2008 and approved in 2009, was clearly heavily reliant on CDLI and BDTNS, and, compared to Mayr, appears to have been less reliant on the examination of actual tablets. This made my task easier because Tsouparopoulou’s catalogue was already aligned with CDLI. Furthermore, because Tsouparopoulou became part of the CDLI team and created that project’s initial seals catalogue, the numbering of seals in CDLI corresponds very closely with that given in Tsouparopoulou’s thesis. As a consequence I was able to work through the monograph, considering several tens of seals in a day, ensuring, where appropriate, that there was a level of consistency between CDLI and Tsouparopoulou’s thesis. This work has been completed.

The main issue for the Drehem seals was the ‘standardization’ of the data. We know that each scribe had a limited number of seals in his career and that many of the seal impressions are difficult to interpret. If the precise reading of each seal impression were transliterated there would be many times more different transliterations than the number of seals involved making those impressions. Hence the need to standardize the data. For a large proportion of published tablets, the readings of the seal legends have been ‘standardized’ so that, for example, the publications of Sigrist usually imply perfect seal legends, whether or not there were difficulties reading those impressions. For the other cases, Tsouparopoulou was doing the standardizing. This was done without discussion within the thesis, though as I was working through the seal catalogue the rationale of the underlying decisions became evident. To a large extent I followed Tsouparopoulou, but it is worthwhile mentioning a couple of cases as examples.

In the first case (Fig. 1a; Snell and Lager, YOS18, 33), the question was, should we take account of the two “stray” signs shown below the boxed legend, which Tsouparopoulou had ignored.

In this case, I hesitated and asked Bob Englund, and his decision was to follow Tsouparopoulou and ignore the two “stray” signs for the time being.

The second case concerns Ur-Šulpa’e, who made two groups of seal impressions of the following form, one dedicated to Amar-Suen and the other to Šu-Suen (Fig. 1b).

Dahl & Hebenstreit (2007) interpret the data literally and assumed that these were two near identical seals that were used concurrently. Tsouparopoulou takes the view that these are physically the same seal that was modified when Šu-Suen succeeded Amar-Suen. Here, I did not ‘standardize’ the data.

Mayr’s dissertation on Umma seals was submitted in 1997 and so did not have the benefit of CDLI and BDTNS. Instead, Mayr’s catalogue of seals was based primarily on Yale tablets, with a relatively small use of tablets from the literature. Mayr seems to have examined more tablets than Tsouparopoulou. He frequently demonstrates that scribes who were active for a lengthy period of time had a number of seals, often with the same legend, so that worn seals could be replaced.

From my perspective, it is more time consuming to absorb Mayr’s dissertation into CDLI. First, there is a larger body of data from Umma than Drehem (c. 6:1). But, second, because the CDLI database does not include unreferenced tablets from the Yale catalogue, many of the tablets that Mayr lists were not listed in CDLI and have to be introduced into the database, which can be time consuming.

For Drehem, much of the work was to eliminate duplicated variations of the same seal legend that had been generated by the electronic sorting procedure within CDLI. For Umma, this was less of an issue. Instead, I have to generate new seal numbers, for Yale tablets, quoted by Mayr, that I am newly introducing into the database. Since Mayr lists 900+ scribes and I process them at an average rate of 100 per week, then this is clearly a lengthy task.

In respect of the multiple seals per scribe: those with different legends are identified with separate seal numbers. However, where the seals have the same legend then (at least, at this stage) I have not identified the tablets with each separate variation of the seal, primarily because, although I could reproduce Mayr’s lists based on the Yale tablets, I could not do this for the many other Umma tablets that Mayr did not consider.

One significant problem that I am having with Mayr’s data is with differences between his listings and publications of those tablets. As an example, there are large numbers of tablets with the seal of the ensi2 of Umma, A-kal-la/A-a-kal-la. All of the tablets in Mayr’s listings have A-kal-a if the seal is dedicated to Amar-Suen and A-a-kal-la if it is dedicated to Šu-Suen. In particular, Mayr lists four TCNU tablets as A-kal-la even though I understand (from BDTNS and CDLI) that the published version gives A-a-kal-la. Furthermore, CDLI lists c. 20 similar tablets (27 in BDTNS) with varying authors. In fact, BDTNS includes four SAT 2 tablets with A-a-kal-la, even though Sigrist’s published version has A-kal-la. There are numerous other examples: Mayr lists four Yale tablets as having an A-kal-la seal dedicated to Amar-Suen, whereas BPOA 6 publishes these four tablets with the seal of A-a-kal-la dedicated to Šu-Suen; Mayr also lists five Yale tablets as having the A-kal-la seal, whereas BPOA 6 states that these five tablets have the seal of Ur-dLi9-si4. It is worth noting that all of the problems noted in this paragraph arise within one inch of text in Mayr’s dissertation. Fortunately the density of problems arising in the remaining text is lower! In these cases, I favored the published versions over the dissertation.

Work on other proveniences

For the Girsu tablets, I have made a start, using two publications by Fischer (1992 & 1997), and added to the numbers of tablets with these impressions by including unpublished tablets listed in the British Museum catalogues. For Nippur, I made a start based on Owen’s NATN list of duplicate seals. However, in both those cases, much more work needs to be done, and would benefit from comprehensive surveys if they exist. I have not done any work on the Garšana seals, but this should be straightforward because there is a preliminary listing of these seals by Mayr in CUSAS 3 with a promise of a fuller version in CUSAS 7. There is also a promised book of the Umma seals, which is stated as being a much-enhanced version of Mayr’s dissertation, but my understanding is that this has not been published.

Future work

BDTNS has done some work to clean its listing of seals, but that this does not include standardizing that database against the Tsouparopoulou and Mayr dissertations. It would be worthwhile cross-checking the listing of seals in CDLI and BDTNS. I did this, to some extent, as I was going along with Drehem, but I had to stop doing it for Umma in order to make a practical rate of progress. Ideally, there should be crosschecking between the tablets listed with each of the seals in CDLI and BDTNS, but this would be a major task.

For Drehem, I started to check for seals included in CDLI but not included by Tsouparopoulou in her thesis, but since the latter was quite recent and was based around CDLI and BDTNS, I came to the conclusion that this check was unnecessary. However, it will be more important for Umma because Mayr’s work is almost 20 years old, pre-dating CDLI, and because it was primarily based on the subset of tablets in Yale that have remained unavailable for research.

Ideally, there should be images of composite seals associated with all CDLI entries, but my attempts to produce acceptable images have been ill fated. It would be useful if CDLI implemented a facility to search exclusively in seal legends, similar to that already available in BDTNS. There should be some cross-linking of seals in the database that are different but belong to the same scribe, but I have not attempted to do this rigorously at this stage (cp. S000022a&b). This points to another weakness in the CDLI listing to which Englund (2014) already referred, namely the removal of the sort of iconographic tagging that would differentiate seals with the same legends, but based on imagery demonstrably different. How best to accomplish this capability would be an important discussion among organizers. Consideration should, as well, be given to whether Mayr’s listing of tablets with differing seals with the same legend should be noted in the database. (I currently reference Mayr’s seal numbers but I do not make explicit which tablets have the different variants.)

Mayr’s listing of tablets with seals includes tablets where the text states that the tablet is sealed (kišib3) even though the seal impression itself is stated (by Mayr) to be illegible. It is worth taking a view on whether such tablets should be given a seal number at all – likely, they should not. In like manner, Tsouparopoulou’s thesis includes a significant number of ambiguous seals that were presumably included for completeness. Because of the way that CDLI seal numbering was done post Tsouparopoulou entry, these Drehem seals with ambiguous legends all have seal numbers. These are not useful and should also be reduced to unidentified status.

The edition of the cuneiform texts belonging to the Truman State University in Akkadica 134/1 presents a few remaining mistakes or details to correct. Some of them were drawn to our attention by W. Sallaberger, whom we thank for his suggestions.

Corrections

§ 2.2. No. 2. The correct date is: Šu-Suen 3/10/22.

§ 2.3. No. 3. Obv. 4: The sign TA was omitted in the copy.

§ 2.5. No. 5. This letter-order must be transliterated and translated as follows:

The person receiving bundles is therefore G̃iri3-ne2-i3-sa6, maybe followed by the dative suffix. This personal name was also misinterpreted as g̃ir3 I3-li2-ša6 in other publications (for instance CUSAS16, 282, obv. 3).

§ 2.7. No. 7. Rev. 1: The personal name mentioned in this line, though regularly interpreted as Al-la-u3-du, must be transliterated as Al-la-igi-še3-du or Al-la-palilx.

In a previous note I published a small corner fragment in the Ashmolean Museum, which belongs to an ED IIIa copy of the lexical list ED Lu2 A (NAMEŠDA).

This fragment is published now as CUSAS 26, 14 by Aage Westenholz (Westenholz 2014) as well. Please note that the museum number AN 1930-409q is the correct one. AN 1930-409g is another fragment, which joins to AN 1924-1561 (see CUSAS 26, 20).

Since the late 1990s, hundreds of Sargonic texts from illicit diggings have appeared on the antiquities market (Westenholz 2010). References to governors (ensi2) of Adab, the Adab calendar, prosopography, onomastic elements, divine names, and cultic places characteristic of Adab as well as grammatical elements such as the use of the verbal prefix e- suggest that a large number of these texts comes from Adab directly. These thus currently provide the largest corpus of Sargonic texts (Schrakamp 2008: 665-669; Schrakamp 2013: 201, note 3; Molina 2014: 24-27).

In his edition of Sargonic texts from Adab in the Real Academia de la Historia Madrid, Molina (2014: 25) supposed that a lot of twenty one Sargonic tablets stem from Adab as well. These had been offered for sale by the Royal Athena Galleries in 1998 and on eBay in 2005. They include the four-line tablet, which deals with military equipment and excerpts entries from Molina 2014: nos. 157-158. The tablet reads:

That “most (if not all)” of the 21 Royal Athena Galleries tablets come from Adab, as Molina (2014: 25) suggested, is further supported, for example, by the verbal form e-na-šum2 in P274888, with an e-prefix diagnostic for Middle Sargonic texts from Adab (Schrakamp 2008: 666-667; Molina 2014: 26-27), and the co-occurrence of e2-maḫ, gala, the ugula gala, and ur-a2 (see Molina 2014: 142, 189) in P274873, who also co-occur as workers and foremen in TCBI 1, 83, Molina 2014: no. 255 and Molina 2014: no. 288.

As first suggested by Burrows (1935: 16, Occupation 54 and 22, Place 16), EREN2+X.KI refers in the archaic texts from Ur to a geographical name. The documents published in ATFU mention a new graphical variant of this term, which consists of a ligature of the sign KI and a Tierkopfzeichen, either S. 161 or S. 163 [note that the tablet recently edited by Bartash, CUSAS23, 144 may also have the sign S. 161b: O0202. 1N1 NIG̃2 Amar-S. 161b, interpreted by the author as PEŠ2. The shape of this sign seems nevertheless similar to UET2, 9: O0201]. Similarly, the writing of this term undergoes slight differences in the texts published in UET 2.

ATFU 65. O0103. 3N1 S. 161b+KI (Although the case is damaged, the presence of the sign ⌜PA?⌝ can be hypothesized, just before the sign S. 161b+KI)

Notwithstanding the previous comments in ATFU [Lecompte (2013: 139)], the signs showing a ligature of KI and S. 161/163 in ATFU 60, 63 and 65 (in both without EREN2) are likely to match the expression EREN2+X (S. 161b). As suggested by Burrows (1935: 16, Occupation 52) and Bauer (1987a: 5, 1987b: 7), the official from this place designated by the sign PA might be identical with the title ensix, “governor” (PA.SI). Also note that similar officials of Ur and Dugin2 can be called either PA or PA.SI. The attestation in ATFU 63 of the ensix of S. 161b+KI, tallies with such an identification. Nevertheless, in other occurrences, the sign PA might also merely refer to an overseer, ugula, who is in charge of a troop, EREN2, however missing in ATFU 63.

The alternative use of different signs representing animal head in this expression is somewhat puzzling, as shown in Table 1.

Nevertheless, the sign PIRIG (= S. 162) also presents some similarities with the first variant of S. 161b, although the gunû of the rear part are vertical in the former, horizontal in the latter. The second variant of the sign S. 161b and the sign S. 163 also present a similar shape, the latter having in addition a kind of MA upon the “head” of the sign.

With regard to the interpretation of this term in the archaic texts from Ur, it has been assumed that it represents a geographical name associated with its administrator, either ugula or ensix, followed by the sign EREN2:

according to Bauer 1987b: 8, ME.EREN2 mentioned in UET2, 235, may be compared to a term referring to “battle”, ME+LAK526 (EREN2 in archaic Ur being LAK527) in an inscription of Ur-Nanše (RIME 1.9.1.6b, Rs. i 6)

according to Marchesi 2006: 23, fn. 93, this term could merely mean: “troops/workers of / stationed at (the city of)...”

Turning now to the identification of this geographical name, Steinkeller 1992: 265 cautiously suggested that EREN2+Xki referred to the gentilic Tidnum and was “an alternative logogram for dit&amacr;nu/tid&amacr;nu, which originated in archaic Ur”. However, since the geographical scope presented in the archaic texts from Ur seems limited to Southern Babylonia, this place name is more likely to refer to a city located in Sumer, or in the region of Kiš. On the other hand, the existence of a city ruler, ensix, might indicate that this place corresponded to an independent state, probably mighty enough to be mentioned in the documents from Ur. As long as the value of this sign cannot be determined, any attempt to identify this place name remains speculative. Furthermore, EREN2+S. 161b does not refer anymore in the sources from the F&amacr;ra period to a city, but is mainly part of personal names or designates an epithet of Šamaš (Krebernik 1992: 112; Steinkeller 1992: 258-264). While uncertain, the value of the sign S. 161b, regarded by E. Burrows as KIŠ, cannot be discarded in view of the attestations in UET2, 112. O0522, ATFU 60. O0405, ATFU 63. O0202, and was therefore kept in ATFU. Furthermore, according to Mittermayer 2005: 82-83, two variants of the sign “X” occur in texts from F&amacr;ra, SF 63, and Ab&umacr; Ṣal&amacr;b&imacr;ḫ, IAS 503, the former with KIŠ, the latter with a sign similar to ANŠE, which might point out ties with the sign KIŠ. The term should nevertheless be transliterated in the archaic texts from Ur as S. 161b/S. 163+KI and EREN2+S. 161b/162.

In a document recently published by Steinkeller 2013, a geographical name, read by the author PIRIG KALAM (v. ii), can be compared to S. 161b/163+KI from the archaic texts from Ur, namely with the first variant of S. 161b.

After Steinkeller 2013: col. v. 2. (copy by the author)

It may be speculated that the sign “PIRIG” from the aforementioned inscription and S. 161b+KI refer to the same place, although the former lacks any horizontal gunû inside its “head”. Since the document published by Steinkeller probably originates from Northern Babylonia, the comparison between both terms tallies with the hypothesis suggested by the same scholar that the sign S. 161/X was adopted or created within the frame of the “Kišite” tradition (Steinkeller 1992: 263-265). Needless to say, the uncertainty pertaining to the interpretation of both signs makes it difficult to reach any firm conclusions as to whether both geographical names are identical or connected with the logograms representing Tidnum, KIŠ PIRIG and GIR3.GIR3. Also note that Steinkeller 2013: 140 identified the sign KIŠ in the aforementioned inscription with a sign considered as a variant of ZATU219 (= “GIR3”). It could, however, also be compared to the sign S. 163 in UET 2 (= ALIM?).

A brief analysis of the context of the occurrences of the terms EREN2+S. 161b and S. 161b+KI permits me to highlight further aspects:

UET2, 34: ⌜PA⌝⌜S. 161b⌝+EREN2 KI occurs on the reverse of the tablet, isolated in the final clause; unclear account mentioning personal names (note the presence of a potter, baḫar4)
UET2, 112: S. 161b+EREN2 KI occurs in the core of a list of personals, just after a broken case probably referring to the name of a person (originating from this place?)

UET2, 235: two mentions of PA S. 161b KI EREN2 in the core of the text; list referring to structures mainly designated as G̃A2 and sag̃-g̃al2 (ki sag̃-g̃al2, NIG2-saḫar?-ra-sag̃-g̃al2, etc.), maybe stations (?); note the presence of the official ugula Dugin2

UET2, 348: flour (?), ŠE3 bad3; PA ⌜PIRIG (S. 162)⌝⌜KI⌝ [...] mentioned in the core of the text with the same quantity as other persons; note the presence of: ensix(PA.SI) BU-MA; ensix-x; nunuzx-zi-Nannax

ATFU 60: PA EREN2-S. 163+KI occurs in the core of an account probably referring to cereals, associated with an average quantity; presence of many personal names and of a “cook”, engiz

ATFU 63: PA.SI S. 161+KI occurs in an unclear account referring to fields; note the presence of the ensix of Ur and the presence of an “individual from Dugin2”, lu2 Dugin2

ATFU 65: S. 161b+KI is mentioned in the core of the tablet, associated with an average quantity of cereal; note the presence of an official from Dugin2

Apart from S. 161b+KI, four other places attested in the archaic texts from Ur have been managed by an official called ensix or PA, as already observed by Bauer (1987a: 5-6): Dugin2, BU-MA, Larsa and the city of Ur itself. It is therefore possible to draw two conclusions from the topic of the present article:

either the texts distinguish the official ensix of the city called S. 161b+KI and the captain, ugula, in charge of a troop or all these terms refer to the same person, according to the identity between the terms PA and PA.SI

S. 161+KI / EREN2+S. 161b KI either refers to a city far from Ur, probably in the region of Kiš (or Kiš itself?), whose troops might be present in Ur (unless those come from Ur), or corresponds to a place in the vicinity of Ur (maybe held by this city’s troop?), such as probably Dugin2 and BU-MA; since the latter names are also apparently scarcely attested in later documentation, geographical names mentioned in archaic Ur may be specific to the ED I-II period.

8. ATFU 32. O0104’. According to M. Krebernik, two personal names are written in different squares, although the separation line is not visible:

O0104’. [1N1 x] Ur

O0105’. [1N1] DA ⌜KA⌝ [...]

O0106’. [1N1 x] ⌜Nannax-sul?⌝

The sign considered to be PAD must therefore be replaced by KA, which might belong to the personal name Inim-zi-da, so far unattested in Ur.

9. The sign to be transliterated in ATFU 33, O0201. ⌜din/g̃eštin?⌝, instead of G̃EŠTIN, is not well drawn in the copy: faint traces of two strokes belonging to a possible but uncertain g̃eš are missing. See also O0103. ⌜lugal⌝ in the new copy. ATFU 41, O0101’. The sign is not G̃EŠTIN, but DIN.

10. ATFU 46. Commentary. O0102’. Lugal-gu2-g̃u10 is, as indicated in note 212, attested in UET 2, PN 473, although its interpretation is uncertain: see Andersson 2012: 178, fn. 1064, and 330. Last phrase of the commentary on p. 99 should be: “which is until now only attested in the texts from Ur”.

11. ATFU 52. The container identified with the sign S. 358, UNKENxDUG, can, as suggested in the commentary, be distinguished from it and construed as ŠENxDUG, although it also shows slight differences with ŠEN.

12. ATFU 55, p. 120. R0101. Instead of [x] A KA2 NA DIM3 DIM3 A A(?) KA2 SAL KA2, read:
[x] A KA2 GIR! DIM3 DIM3 A A(?) KA2 SAL KA2
The sign NA must be replaced by the sign GIR, which was not well drawn by the scribe. Since GIR is the name of a fish, its presence on this tablet may tally with the hypothesis of Burrows 1935: 11 regarding the meaning of GI, written here in the first line, as an object used for fishing. This is the only attestation of the sign GIR in ATFU, which should be added to the final sign index.

14. ATFU 57. O0302. The personal name generally interpreted as Mes-lu2-nu-še3 (see for instance Pomponio 1987: 173-174) should be read correctly as Mes-lu2-nu-ḫug̃, according to the template given by the name of the ruler from Lagaš, Lugal-AN-da-nu-ḫug̃-g̃a2.

15. ATFU 60, p. 140, note 292. In the sign list edited by Green and Nissen (1987: 259), the sign nesag̃ is registered as NISAG, ZATU416, whereas it was transliterated as NESAG2(a) in ATU 3, 270-271 as well as in other publications of archaic texts.

16. ATFU 62. O0403’. The sign can also be read BAḪAR4 (BAḪAR2+BAR); in the archaic texts from Ur, this profession is only written BAḪAR2 BAR (BAḪAR4), whereas in the ED IIIa tablets, BAḪAR2 and BAḪAR4 are both attested.

17. ATFU 63. Two lines, which were drawn to my attention by M. Krebernik, refer to the official designated as ensix(PA.SI) of Ur and must be corrected accordingly.
O0101’. 2N1 PA.SI(ensix)-uri5. The sign interpreted as NUN has indeed two oblique strokes and must be replaced in the transliteration by ŠEŠ. The alleged ensix eš3-nun, see Introduction, p. 26, is therefore identical with the ensix uri5.
Accordingly, the same offical called ensix can be assumed in: O0203’. 1N14 2N1⌜PA.SI-uri5⌝.

18. Typos:

Introduction: 4.7. p. 13: “As observed by M. Krebernik, -mud seems to be constructed with an ablative that is generally omette”, replace with “omitted”.

Introduction. 5. p. 19: in the phrase beginning with “Another distinctive element”, cancel “in the System Š” at the end.

Introduction. 6. p. 22, note 72, replace: “during the texts from the time of the First Dynasty of Lagaš” by: “in the texts from the time of the First Dynasty of Lagaš”.

ATFU 13. Commentary, p. 49: O0202’ and O0203’ instead of R0202’ and R0203’. In O0203’: “This PN could be” instead of “This PN line could be”.

Appendix: New copies

The following notes intend to improve the edition of the 65 archaic tablets from Ur published in Nisaba 25 and to present an overview on the terms used for goats and sheep in the ED I-II tablets.

The terminology relating to goats in the archaic texts from Ur, which shows slight differences from the Uruk period (Green 1980: 3-6; Englund 1998: 149), also presents some affinities with the Neo-Sumerian documentation and the Drehem sources (see for instance Steinkeller 1995b: 54). The sign MAŠ, in particular, does not seem to be attested in archaic Ur as a “male kid,” whereas the term maš2 nita2 (UET2, 298. O0101), refers to a buck/billy goat. In comparison to the terminology known from the Uruk, ED IIIb and Ur III periods, the goats enumerated in UET 2 and ATFU can be more precisely determined as follows (Table 1):

Female

Male

Adult

Uruk:

UD5

Uruk:

MAŠ2

ED I-II:

ud5 = nanny goat

ED I-II:

maš2 nita2 = billy goat/buck

(maš2 = billy goat)

ED III Lagaš:

ud5

ED III Lagaš:

maš (1)

Ur III Drehem:

ud5

Ur III Drehem:

maš2 (gal) (nita)

Juvenile

Uruk:

EŠGAR

Uruk:

MAŠ

ED I-II:

aš2-gar3 = female kid

ED I-II:

maš2 = male kid? (2)

ED III Lagaš:

mi2aš2-gar3-(ša3-du10 / gaba)

ED III Lagaš:

maš ša3-du10 / gaba / sig

Ur III Drehem:

aš2-gar3

Ur III Drehem:

maš2

(1) It must also be noted that in Pre-Sargonic tablets from Lagaš, maš designates a (junger) Ziegenbock, “billy goat,” according to the translation of Bauer 1972: 625; see Selz 1993: 82 = AWAS 4: “Ziegenbock, auch Ziege allgemein.”
(2) In UET2, 298, two kinds of goat are registered: maš2 nita2 and maš2, which may therefore respectively refer to billy goat and male kid.

Table 1: Terminology for goats

For aš2-gar3 represented in the archaic texts from Uruk by the sign EŠGAR, see Green 1980: 4 and Englund 1998: 149. The sign GAR3 in the ED I-II texts may indeed be a later variant of EŠGAR, rather than a form of DU8.gunû, as suggested in ATFU. At least three other contemporary documents mention “female kids”: UET2, 223. O0102: 1N14 aš2-⌜gar3⌝; UET2, 237. O0101. 3N1 [aš2] ⌜gar3⌝; W 17887 (ZA 72 = Green 1982, Text 6). O0101. 2N1⌜aš2 -gar3?⌝ ud5, which probably refers to a female kid still with a nanny goat (see in Pre-Sargonic Lagaš, BIN8, 366 = AWAS 93, Obv. I. 3. 1 kuš maš ud5, translated by Selz 1993: 594: “1 Haut von einem Ziegenbock (noch bei der Mutter)zicke”). Also note that the sign S. 276 in UET 2 was considered to be identical with EŠGAR by the authors of ATU 2 (ZATU149, Green and Nissen 1987: 201, see also Green 1980: 4). Whereas the second variant of the aforementioned sign (S. 276b in the list of E. Burrows) is different and may be assigned another value, the first form (S. 276a) is attested in only two texts:

Therefore, the assignment of the value EŠGAR to this sign in the archaic texts from Ur seems unlikely. In the lexical lists from F&amacr;ra, it can be compared with LAK779, apparently only attested in the list Lu2 B: SF 70. Obv. IV. 2. SAL LAK779 DIM2 (MSL 12: 13).

The second variant of the aforementioned sign (S. 276b in the list of E. Burrows) is different and might be assigned another value:

UET 2, 87. O0403’. 1N14 (=1 bur3) S. 276b IGI+GU4 AMA? AK. The sign IGI is slightly erased, but the faintly visible traces do not seem to belong to the sign SIG7. Moreover, a small sign similar to AMA was drawn upon GU4 but erased. S. 276b might be here similar to NA2.

UET 2, 159. O0103. 2N14 S. 276b MA A. Sign S. 276b seems in this last occurrence to be different to the former.

According to the data from ED I-II texts from Ur, the terminology for sheep is as follows (Table 2):

Female

Male

Adult

Uruk:

U8

Uruk:

UDUNITA

ED I-II:

u8 = ewe

ED I-II:

udu (nita2) = ram

ED III Lagaš:

u8 (ama)

ED III Lagaš:

udu nita

Ur III Drehem:

u8

Ur III Drehem:

udu (nita)

Juvenile

Uruk:

KIR11

Uruk:

SILANITA

ED I-II:

kir11 (SAL-sila4) = female lamb

ED I-II:

sila4 nita2 = male lamb (2)

ED III Lagaš:

MI2 U8 (?) (1)

ED III Lagash:

sila4 nita

Ur III Drehem:

kir11

Ur III Drehem:

sila4

(1) Although Selz 1997: 193, fn. 119 considers Bauer’s suggestion (1972: 295, AWL 97, I. 4) to be uncertain, it has to be noticed that the term kir11 is seemingly not attested in the Pre-Sargonic texts from Girsu/Lagaš.
(2) See UET2, 16. R0101-0102 for kir11 and sila4 nita2.

In my article “A Scribal Family and its Orthographic Peculiarities” in 2011 I discussed texts from Middle Assyrian Assur, which belong to a corpus written by the sons of the royal scribe Ninurta-uballissu. Thanks to the extant colophons at our disposal we have a rather good grasp of the scribal activity of these scribes. However, due to the state of preservation and the dissemination of parts of the material already in antiquity, future palaeographical studies will most likely reveal more examples belonging to this corpus. (One example, which appears to belong to the corpus copied by the members of this family is a fragment kept in the archaeological collection of the University of Zurich, Switzerland, which, though lacking a preserved colophon, resembles many features of similar tablets in this group.) Although written by “young scribes” (ṭupšarr&umacr; ṣeḫr&umacr;tu), these texts do not offer many clues about scribal education of some sort, which we can presume most likely happened within the (private) realm of scribes such as Ninurta-uballissu. Putting orthographical peculiarities and other variations aside, there are hardly any significant errors or erasures in the pertinent texts. Unfortunately we lack any archival information on those scribes which would shed some light onto their lives.

The three brothers Marduk-bal&amacr;ssu-ereš, B&emacr;l-aḫa-iddina and Sîn-šuma-iddina copied a great deal of lexical and literary material, all of which has come down to us in bilingual form. Most of these (quite well-preserved) texts represent our earliest sources for Akkadian translations of Sumerian literary compositions such as “Ninurta’s Exploits” or “Ninurta’s Return to Nippur,” but go back to earlier (bilingual) Middle Babylonian sources, for which evidence is rather scarce (see, for instance, CBS 11153 (+) N 6286). The majority of lexical sources known from Assur and dating to the last centuries of the 2nd millennium BC already shows signs of “canonization.” A closer glance, however, reveals some differences, as does the text, whose colophon shall be discussed in greater detail below.

The small fragment VAT 9487 originates from the lower left corner of a large tablet with probably either two (see the copy of the second tablet of Diri by B&emacr;l-aḫa-iddina; Ass. 2559; see also Wagensonner 2011: 672, 2.1.2) or three columns per side (see the hand-copy in Wagensonner 2011: 700 and compare to VAT 10172 for a better preserved manuscript of the first tablet of the series Ea with three columns on each side; hand-copy in Wagensonner 2014: 476-477). The copy contains the third tablet of the series Diri, a supplemental sign syllabary, which provides readings and translations of Sumerian compound logograms. By the Middle Assyrian period the sequence of entries and the division into “tablets” already follow the later conventions. It is a “0-1-2-4”-type list (“0” representing the vertical wedge or entry marker; “1” the syllabically written reading of a (compound) logogram; “2” the (compound) logogram; “4” the Akkadian equivalent). Later copies of the 1st millennium BC add a column “3” containing an analytical writing of the (compound) logogram, traces of which are visible in the copy of the 1st tablet of the sign syllabary Ea copied by Sîn-šuma-iddina, the third son of Ninurta-uballissu (see VAT 10172, col. ii, 66-67).

Providing readings to Sumerian compound logograms is Diri’s most important feature. Single logograms occupying just one slot in column “2” are usually invalid in this list, but are organized within the framework of the sign syllabary Ea. There is also the noteworthy fact that single logograms are “validated” for Diri by adding a classifier or determinative. Thus, frequently both lists attest to the same reading, irrespective of whether a classifier is added in Diri (see Table 1). A similar example comes from entries preserved on our manuscript: Entries 2-5 (Obv. col. i, 3-8) deal with “fire wood.” (see for the composite text Civil 2005: 136). All these entries contain in column “2” the logogram group GIŠ.BARtenû.AŠ2, which is assigned to the readings ki-bir, geš-ki-bir, gi-bil2, and geš-gi-bil2. On the 1st tablet of Ea on the other hand the logogram BARtenû.AŠ2 occurs as well, but appears to be regarded occupying a single slot with the constituent BARtenû or ŠU2 serving as a kind of framing sign (see Wagensonner [forthcoming]).

According to the colophon, VAT 9487 was copied by a certain Nabû-šuma-iddina (written dag-mu-sum-na), son of Badû. The copy was checked by B&emacr;l-aḫa-iddina (written d+en-šeš-sum-na), who is certainly identical with the afore-mentioned son of Ninurta-uballissu. It was argued that at the time this list was copied he was not a “young or apprentice scribe” any more, as he is known from copies written on his own (Jakob 2002: 258; Wagensonner 2011: 675). However, the colophon breaks at the right-hand side and therefore it is not clear whether the occupation lu2a.ba is followed by tur or not. But note that there appears to be not much space on the tablet to accommodate this sign or a possible lugal in the preceding line.

Above the reference to the 3rd tablet of Diri the scribe wrote the catch-line, which refers to the incipit of the subsequent tablet in the series. Although we know from later sources of the 4th tablet that the first entry containing the compound logogram U2.KUR.RA.SAR provides a reading šem-bi-ri-da, this reading differs a bit in the catch-line of VAT 9487: šem-bi-ri. Civil 2005: 151 interprets the ensuing damaged sign as possible DA, but the sign remains more likely point to KUR.⌜RA⌝, therefore column “2” most likely just contained the compound logogram KUR.RA.SAR. The reading šem-bi-ri-da is based on later sources for both, the 4th tablet of Diri (see Civil 2005: 150-151) and tablet 4a of Nabn&imacr;tu, line 260 (77), which reads (after ms. A = CT 12, pl. 36-37: U2.KUR.RAšem-bi-ri-da.SAR : u2-ku-ur-ra-ni-si-gu-uni-nu-u (see Finkel 1982: 86).

Thus far, the beginning of the composition is not preserved on any of the known manuscripts dating to the later “canonical” stage (see Civil 2005: 3). Our text is one of the few preserved manuscripts that provides the series’ title in its colophon. Line 3’ on the reverse reads:

⌜dub 3(diš)⌝.kam2.ma ⌜eren2*-na*⌝ SI.Air* at-⌜ru⌝

Miguel Civil in his edition of the text (ms. B) did not read the two signs, which precede the logogram group SI.A (see also the respective entry in the Digitale Keilschriftbibliothek). Although proposing a possible reading UD.DU earlier (Wagensonner 2011: 675, 2.1.6), a re-evaluation of the sign remains suggests a different interpretation now (note that the copy provided by the Digitale Keilschriftbibliothek is misleading, since more remains are visible on the tablet).

Another manuscript of Diri (Ass. 2559) was copied by B&emacr;l-aḫa-iddina himself. Its colophon omits the reading of the compound logogram and only has SI.A at-ru (the tablet needs to be collated; see Wagensonner 2011: 672, 2.1.2).

There are not many possibilities for the two signs on VAT 9487. The second sign is clearly the sign NA, which is testified further down in the text as well. The sign that precedes it resembles EREN2; it is too short for SUM, which appears as logogram in the sequence sum-na in the names Nabû-šuma-iddina and Bél-aḫa-iddina in the colophon (see above). One might entertain the possibility that the tablet’s scribe did write his name directly after the catch line, but decided to include the tablet’s reference without erasing his name properly in the still moist clay. There is another insufficient erasure at the beginning of the subsequent line, which (again) looks as if he wanted to start writing the scribe’s impressum (q&amacr;t PN, “hand of PN”). Instead he inserted the remark al.til representing the Akkadian remark qati, “it (the source) is complete,” followed by the scribal information.

After inspection of the tablet at least the first sign does not appear to be partly erased. Another interpretation for the two signs preceding the compound logogram SI.A is a syllabically written reading, which usually appears in sign syllabaries of this and later periods. But the compound logogram SI.A has no reading ending in the syllable na, and there is no Sumerian equivalent of Akkadian atru with a similar ending either. On the tablet, SI.A is followed by an oddly squeezed sign IR, which should be and has been interpreted as phonetic complement to the reading dir(i).

After re-evaluation I therefore would like to propose that both eren2-na as well as *ir are traces of the scribe’s impressum, which he had not erased properly. Fig. 1,b contains a new hand copy of the respective lines (erasures are drawn red) next to a close-up photo trying to take this possibility into account. Line 3’ on the tablet’s reverse therefore should be rendered as follows:

The close-up shots of the tablet (Fig. 1,a) show that interpreting the aforementioned signs as traces of older text appears unlikely at first glance. This solution, however, enables us to avoid an unparalleled reading for the compound logogram SI.A and explains the extremely odd-looking insertion of a phonetic complement. And at close examination there are indeed further sign remains visible, which previously appeared more likely to be scratches.

Despite its comparatively small size, the collection of cuneiform artefacts in the National Museums Scotland (NMS) surprises in its diversity in terms of periods and regions covered. Although approximately half of the texts and fragments date to the Ur III period and can be classified as administrative accounts, there is an interesting group of Sumerian literary works as well as legal texts dating to the Old Babylonian period. In the course of digitizing the collection of cuneiform artefacts kept in the museum’s storage in June 2013 the stamped and inscribed bricks in the collection had been imaged as well. One among them is an inscribed brick which could be identified as a Middle Elamite royal inscription.

Brick inscriptions of the Middle Elamite period are usually hand-written rather than stamped (Potts 2010: 52), the latter being the usual model for bricks found at sites of their Mesopotamian neighbor. This difference and the greater complexity and length of the inscriptions found at sites of the Iranian plateau lead frequently to orthographical variants between witnesses of one inscription, no matter how standardized a text appears to be.

In 1995 Florence Malbran-Labat published a catalogue of brick inscriptions in the Louvre Museum, which originate from excavations in Susa, and aimed at presenting them within a chronological framework. Most noteworthy are the inscriptions by the kings of the so-called Shutrukid dynasty, a dynasty starting with king Šutruk-Naḫḫunte (ca. 1190-1155), who is famed for his invasion of Babylonia in the 12th century, from which he brought back some of the (at least nowadays) most iconic monuments from the ancient Near East, such as, for instance, the stela with the law code of Hammurabi or the Victory stela of Nar&amacr;m-Sîn.

Šutruk-Naḫḫunte’s second son and successor Šilḫak-Inšušinak (ca. 1150-1120) is known from many building works, which he conducted in Susa, and which are commemorated on bricks such as the example in the NMS collection. These building works are summarized in Potts 1999: 238. The new witness NMS A.1960.228 in the collection in Edinburgh commemorates the restoration of the temple of the deity Kiririša-of-Liyan, literally the “Great Goddess of Liyan,” at the ancient site of Liyan, modern Bushire. (As Potts noted recently, this goddess is referred to as Kiriri$scaron;-of-Liyan in inscriptions from Susa, but is found without the place name at Chogha Zanbil and Liyan itself [Potts 2010: 63].) We have another interesting type of brick with an inscription by Šilḫak-Inšušinak dedicated to this goddess (published in Grillot & Vallat 1984). Šilḫak-Inšušinak’s inscriptions deal with two building works at Liyan. After restoration of Kiririša’s temple he conducted its decoration with glazed bricks (see Malbran-Labat 1995: 95-96, No. 42).

The inscribed text (Fig. 1) is identical to Malbran-Labat 1995: 90-92, No. 39, and is known from quite a few copies originating from the French excavations in Susa (for a list see p. 255 there). It is noteworthy that this commemorative text is also known in a shortened version from a couple of stamped bricks (see Malbran-Labat 1995: 91-92). The brick was previously in the possession of John Reddoch MacLuckie from the parish of Falkirk and is said to come from Bushire, the ancient Liyan, which is mentioned in the inscription. More is unfortunately not known about its whereabouts.

Fig. 1: Inscribed side of the brick (click for enlarged view)

The sign forms resemble those known from other contemporary sources (see Steve 1992). The text is ruled. As usually found on Middle Elamite brick inscriptions, the end of a line usually does not mark neither a word border nor the end of some semantic unit.

Translation
I, Šilḫak-Inšušinak, son of Šutruk-Naḫḫunte, beloved servant of Kiririša and Inšušinak, king of Anzan and Susa: Ḫumban-Numena has built the temple of Kiririša-of-Liyan with fired bricks, and when it was about to collapse, I restored it. With fired brick(s) I rebuilt. And for the sake of my life and those of Naḫḫunte-Utu, Ḫuteluduš-Inšušinak, Šilḫina-ḫamru-Lakamar, Kutir-ḫuban, Išnikarab-ḫuḫun, Urutuk-el-ḫalaḫume and Utu-eḫiḫi-Pinigir, for this purpose and for our continuity I bestowed it upon my deity Kiririša.

Comments

3. For the most recent treatment of the irregular verbal form mi-ši-ir-ma-ma see Kozuh 2014: 135-137. Krebernik 2006: 176 translates the phrase *zammi-k ak miši-r-ma-k, “(Tempel) war schwach geworden und drohte einzustürzen” ([the temple] became weak and was in danger to collapse); see also Hinz & Koch 1987: II. 937, “in seinem allmählichen Verfallensein” (in its process of being dilapidated). The expression *miši-r-ma-ma u sarra-ḫ erentum-imma pepši-mma kuši-ḫ, “when it was about to collapse, I restored it; I rebuilt.”

4. The list of Šilḫak-Inšušinak’s family members has parallels in other inscriptions as well, most notably in König 1965: No. 54, where the various family members are invoked: Naḫḫunte-utu is identified as ru-tu4 ḫa-ni-ik-u2-⌜ri⌝-[me], “my chosen wife.” The names of the children which follow are described as pu-ḫu ku-ši-ik-u2-pe, “the children procreated by me.”

5. The only variant in this witness is in the spelling of the PN Šilḫina-ḫamru-Lakamar. Instead of la-ka4-ma-ar-me or la-ka4-mar-me (the latter attested in brick No. 1819; see Malbran-Labat 1995: 90) this witness – probably erroneously – inserts me and writes la-ka4-me-ma-ar-me. The inanimate suffix for abstract nouns -me still refers back to *takki-me, “life,” in line 4, and follows every element in the chain (see Stolper 2004: 86, 5.2).

7. For the term ir kinti (written ir ki-in-ti) see Malbran-Labat 1995: 86 with further literature. Kozuh 2014: 139 translates “continuity”; see also Michaud 2000: 15.

The building projects of the Middle Elamite king Šilḫak-Inšušinak as attested in the countless commemorative and building inscriptions known from Iranian sites such as the ancient sites of Susa or Liyan testify to his dedication towards restoring old sanctuaries and shrines of the major deities in the Elamite pantheon. The restoration of buildings is the common denominator of a majority of the Middle Elamite building inscriptions (Potts 2010: 50).

CDLN 2014:17Changyu Liu: Notes on Elamites and the date of three Drehem texts

In his recent contribution on the Elamites and Elam in Ur III times, Piotr Michalowski cited two Drehem texts, MVN 13, 695 and PDT 1, 529, both with year name broken. The former text mentions a large group of Elamites during the festival of the Marhašites (see, most recently, Steinkeller 2006 and Steinkeller 2014 for references to Elam and Marhaši). As Piotr Michalowski suggested, “It is probable that these events took place around the fifth year of Amar-Sin ...” (Michalowski 2008a: 110). His guess of dating the text MVN 13, 695 to AS 5 is probably not correct. I date the text MVN 13, 695 not to AS 5 but to AS 2, based on a so-called ki-bi gi4-a-account NYPL 345 dating to AS 2 v (see Hilgert 2003: 57-60 and Farber 2007 for the significance of these accounts on the reconstruction of the administrative documents issued by the Puzriš-Dagan organization). Lines 26-30 of column 4 of the obverse of the text NYPL 345 mention 36 animals (13 udu, 18 u8, 5 maš2) designated as the nig̃2-dab5 of Marhašites. Through comparing the animals and other paralleled information attested in between both texts, MVN 13, 695 and NYPL 345, some restorations and dating the text MVN 13, 695 are available as follows:

The number of animals and the type of animals attested in the MVN 13, 695 are identical with those attested in the NYPL 345. Moreover, the available month names of both texts are the same as well. What is more striking, both texts are issued by Aba-saga: MVN 13, 695 is the disbursement (ba-zi) of livestock issued by Aba-saga, while NYPL 345 is the ki-bi gi4-a-account issued by Aba-saga. Lastly, both texts mention the people of Marhaši (lu2 Mar-ha-šiki-ke4-ne). The small difference between both texts is that MVN 13, 695 mentions the clause ezem lu2 Mar-ha-šiki-ke4-ne, while NYPL 345 mentions the phrase nig̃2-dab5 lu2 Mar-ha-šiki-ke4-ne. Accordingly, it is definitely certain that the above-mentioned texts record the same event at the same time, and MVN 13, 695 should be dated to AS 2 v 27.

Coincidentally, another text, PDT 1, 529 with year name and month name broken, also mentions a large group of personal names which are almost identical to the Elamite personal names attested in MVN 13, 695. Although both the year name and the month name of PDT 1 529 are broken, it is not impossible to reconstruct its date. I suggest that PDT 1 529 date to AS 1 v, on the basis of SAT 2, 663 (AS 1 v), in which the day date is broken. Through the comparison between PDT 1 529 and SAT 2 663, the dates of both texts and a few restorations of them can be considered probable.

The content recorded in lines ii:24-28 on the reverse of PDT 1, 529 is identical to lines 1-5 on the obverse of SAT 2 663. Unless this is a coincidence, both texts record the same event at the same day (Day 27). Based on this conclusion, it can also be inferred that PDT 1, 529 dates to AS 1 v, probably consisting of 30 days, and SAT 2 663 dates to AS 1 v 27. In addition, on the basis of the fact that SAT 2, 663 mentions the disbursement (ba-zi) of livestock issued by Nasa, PDT 1 529 also should record the disbursement (ba-zi) of livestock issued by Nasa, probably a balanced account (nig̃2-kas7-ak) issued by Nasa during the fifth month of the first regnal year of Amar-Suen.

Accordingly, the conclusions can be drawn as follows.

First of all, MVN 13, 695 dates to AS 2 v 27, while the monthly record PDT 1 529 dates to AS 1 v.

In addition, SAT 2, 663 can be accurately dated to AS 1 v 26, based on its identical content attested in day 26 of PDT 1, 529. The restorations of lines 6’-12’ on the obverse and line 1’ on the reverse of SAT 2, 663 are my guess, on the basis of the records attested in lines ii:29-35 of the reverse of PDT 1, 529.

Last but not least, the majority of Elamites attested in both texts, MVN 13, 695 and PDT 1, 529, appeared twice at the same day of two subsequent years, AS 1 v 27 and AS 2 v 27, respectively. On the first occasion, it was Nasa who disbursed (ba-zi) livestock for the Elamites, while on the second, it was Aba-saga who disbursed (ba-zi) livestock for almost the same Elamites. The reason why they occurred on the same day (Day 27) in two subsequent years is unclear. It is possibly either a mere coincidence, or of particular significance. Purely as a guess, I suggest that the majority of Elamites appeared in the Ur III court possibly for the celebration of the new king (Amar-Suen)’s enthroning event or for the alliance with the Ur III court.

Unfortunately, the quality of the printed plates in my 2010 article “A Babylonian Gang of Potters” (pp. 275-305 in Kogan, L. et. al. (eds.) City Administration in the Ancient Near East: Proceedings of the 53e Rencontre Assyriologique Internationale Vol. 2 (Moscow 2010)) is such that it does not allow for close inspection of the individual entries of the tablets. The publication of these plates here as a supplement to the images of the originals affords me also the opportunity to correct a typo in Appendix A on page 298 (inverse the order of “debits” and “credits”).

In the course of digitizing the cuneiform collection of the Ashmolean Museum at the University of Oxford within the framework of CDLI, the database not only grew by approximately 1,000 new entries, but some new intriguing sources appeared. One among them shall be the topic of this short note.

Entry 1718 of the unpublished catalogue of the excavated texts from the site of Kiš mentions “Miscellaneous fragments” classified as “Pre-Sargonic texts.” In total, 26 fragments belong to this group. The bulk of these fragments appear to be of administrative nature. However, a tiny fragment among them, Ashm 1930-409g, shows physical features of “scholarly” or literary texts indicated by the quite rectangular shape of the upper left corner.

Although not much text is preserved on this fragment, the extant remains can be identified as the initial entries of the professions list Early Dynastic Lu2 A. Both the fragment’s shape as well as the signs’ palaeography favor an Early Dynastic date, probably ED IIIa. It can be compared to other manuscripts known from the sites of F&amacr;ra and Tell Ab&umacr; Ṣal&amacr;b&imacr;ḫ, such as SF75. Ashm 1930-409g is thus far the only known manuscript of this frequently copied lexical text from the ancient site of Kiš.

Oliver Gurney did not include this fragment in his inventory of lexical texts in the Ashmolean Museum published in MSL SS 1 (Gurney 1986: 58-67). The majority of lexical texts from the site of Kiš dates to the 1st millennium BC and mostly represent the rather fossilized corpus of lexical texts around that time. There is hardly any evidence from earlier periods, except for some important evidence dating to the Old Akkadian period (see below).

In what follows the remains of text on Ashm 1930-409g are copied and transliterated followed by a few comments that pertain to the preserved entries of the profession list:

Comments

Noteworthy is the second entry of the list: nam2-tuku. The Ebla Sign-list, which in its first half clearly draws on the entries of ED Lu2 A, has in its third entry the sign TUKU (Archi 1987a: 106, manuscript A). The same is the case for the manuscripts of this list in Ebla, such as MEE 3, 1. In F&amacr;ra, the situation is a bit different. The aforementioned manuscript SF75, for instance, has in its second entry the sign ḪUB2 instead of TUKU, the former adding two small wedges at the end of the sign form of TUKU (see Fig. 1 and the remarks in Krebernik 1998: 282). The “school text” SF76, which contains the first entries of this list, has a clear TUKU in the second entry. The Old Akkadian and later manuscripts do use the simpler sign form TUKU. It is noteworthy that in EDSL-C the entries TUKU and ḪUB2 follow each other (entries col. 2, 12-13; see Civil 2010: 170).

Fig. 1: The signs TUKU and ḪUB2

A common feature of Early Dynastic lexical texts is the entry marker 1(aš) going back to the numeral 1N1 in the archaic predecessors. This feature is omitted on Ashm 1930-409g. There are but a few copies of lexical texts in the later Early Dynastic period, which omit the entry marker (see, for instance, the “school text” SF76 containing entries of ED Lu2 A). All other copies of this lexical text in F&amacr;ra include the entry marker. The manuscript OIP99, 2 from Tell Ab&umacr; Ṣal&amacr;b&imacr;ḫ writes the entry marker rather faintly. This same manuscript also uses the sign form TUKU instead of the more complex form ḪUB2.

Fig. 2: Remains of a drawing on the top edge

Another intriguing feature of the fragment Ashm 1930-409g are traces of a drawing, which appears on the fragment’s top edge and which resembles a waved line (Fig. 2). The drawing most likely was done by three impressions of the stylus. Drawings on tablets dating to the ED IIIa and IIIb periods are quite common. This type of drawing resembles characteristics of the complex drawing found on the aforementioned text SF76 from F&amacr;ra. There are in fact several instances of drawings found on manuscripts of ED Lu2 A, which were collected and discussed by Pietro Mander (1995: 6-9). But on our fragment too little is preserved in order to make any attempt towards its classification.

The Early Dynastic list of professions Lu2 A with its archaic roots in Uruk is one of the most popular compilations of the 3rd millennium BC and was still copied faithfully in the first half of the 2nd millennium BC.

The role of ancient Kiš in the dissemination of writing particularly to the north and northwest in the first half of the 3rd millennium is undeniable and was the subject of much debate. Recently Niek Veldhuis discussed the so-called “Kiš Tradition” and the lexical texts associated with this tradition (Veldhuis 2014). The various intentions for compilations associated with this tradition is fairly different compared to the fossilized archaic lexical corpus, dealing to a great extent with terminology that is absent from the contemporary vernacular. Nevertheless, these arcane lists were copied and studied; the latter aspect is quite apparent in the Old Babylonian period when pronunciation glosses are being added to the various entries of archaic lists. A case in point is a list of professions, which started to appear among the texts found at Tell Ab&umacr; Ṣal&amacr;b&imacr;ḫ. This list, nowadays known as ED Lu2 E, is clearly “more relevant for scribal practice” (Veldhuis 2014: 245) than ED Lu2 A.

To my knowledge, Ashm 1930-409g is the only manuscript of ED Lu2 A thus far known from the site of Kiš. It is furthermore the earliest known lexical source from that site and one of the few 3rd millennium lexical texts, which originate from Kiš. Other early sources such as the well-preserved prism Ashm 1931-128 containing a copy of ED Metals or the poorly preserved manuscript of ED Birds A Ashm 1931-123b date to the slightly later Old Akkadian period.

Nonetheless, lexical texts from the site of Kiš dating to the 3rd millennium are poorly documented. Much of its role for the dissemination of lexical texts in the Early Dynastic period is probably owed to the proximity to the site of Jemdet Nasr with texts finds from the Uruk III period. Kiš figures prominently in the administrative texts from Ebla (see, for instance, Archi 1987b) and served as source for the transmission of lexical and literary material from southern Mesopotamia utilizing Mari on the Middle Euphrates as intermediary (see the colophons of the Ebla lexical texts MEE3, 47 and MEE3, 50, both mentioning that they were written when young scribes came up from Mari; see, for instance, Archi 1992: 11 and 13).

The toponym a-dam-DUNki, frequently attested in Lagash II/Ur III sources and in Šimaški/Sukkalmaḫ period texts from Susa, was identified with Tepe Surkhegan in 1993 by Vallat (1993: 4; cf. Vallat 1997; for previous research, see the references cited in Edzard & Farber 1974: 3-5; Edzard & Farber & Sollberger 1977: 4-5; Vallat 1993: 4; De Graef 2006: 31-32; Michalowski 2008: 114-121). Vallat based this proposal on a Gudea inscription which commemorates the construction of a sanctuary of the “mistress of a-dam-DUNki” and was said to have been found in 1972 by the local population at Tepe Surkhegan. Steve (2001: 13-14) and Potts (2010: 246) published a copy, transliteration, and translation; Steinkeller (2013: 299 n. 44) provided an improved reading.

This identification suits the fact that a-dam-DUNki was incorporated in the Ur III gun2 ma-da belt and was reached from Sumer by boat (Steinkeller 2013: 297). It also matches Michalowski’s proposal to identify a-dam-DUNki as the central city of the land of Awan (Michalowski 2008: 115). It was thus accepted by Lafont (1996: 91), Steve (2001: 12), De Graef (2006: 32), Krebernik (2006: 74), and Steinkeller (2013: 299). Potts (2010: 246-247) and Michalowski (2008: 115 n. 20) questioned whether the inscription came from Tepe Surkhegan and rejected this identification, but Gasche (apud Steinkeller 2013: 299 n. 43) confirmed its provenience, so that the equation Tepe Surkhegan = a-dam-DUNki seems established.

The identification also has consequences for the reading of a-dam-DUNki. The conventional reading, a-dam-dunki, was proposed by Scheil and Poebel on the basis of an alleged etymology with Elamite Haltamti, but most scholars nowadays reject this (Vallat 1993: 4; Vallat 1996; De Graef 2006: 31-32; Krebernik 2006: 64-67, 74; Michalowski 2008: 115 with n. 19). Civil (1998) suggested the reading a-dam-šaḫ2ki, assuming that the Sumerian term for a container, duga-dam-šaḫ/šaḫ3 = adamšaḫû, was derived from the toponym and related to the animal name dam/dim3-šaḫ/šaḫ2/šaḫ3. This was considered hypothetical by Michalowski (2008: 115 n. 19), and rejected by Krebernik (2006: 74), who instead entertained the reading a-dam-sulki, since the ED IIIb Girsu text Nik. 1, 310 = Selz 1989: no. 310 mentions a place-name e2-dam-[s]ul-la (locative) in a context together with Elamite toponyms.

Orthographic variants and writings with phonetic indicators are otherwise unattested, with the exception of e-dam-DUNki which appears twice in Ur III Girsu (TCTI 1, 668: 29 and TCTI 2, 3795: 17; see Bauer 2009: 256), and a few references without the determinative ki. e2-dam-sul-la also lacks the determinative and recalls localities in the region of Lagash, such as e2-dam-si and e2-dam-sur3/utul2-gal (Selz 1995: 116-117), or the Ur III personal name e2-da-sul-la (MVN 15, 325 obv. 7). But as the name occurs together with Elam and Urua, tentatively identified with Musiy&amacr;n in Deh Lur&amacr;n (Steinkeller 1982: 244-246; Frayne 1992: 71; Michalowski and Wright 2010: 107), and appears as a locative in a syntagma parallel to elam-ma “in Elam” (Selz 1989: 540; 1991: 38-39; cf. Krebernik 2006: 74), it certainly refers to a place in the east. a-dam-DUNki also occurs in Ur III sources together with Duduli, Sabum, Susa, and Urua, i. e. places to be located in Khuzestan (see, e. g., Berens 77: a-dam-DUNki, Sabum; Berens 84: a-dam-DUNki, Duduli, Susa; Berens 91: a-dam-DUNki, Susa; Berens 92: a-dam-DUNki, Sabum, Susa, Urua; CUSAS 16, 233: a-dam-DUNki, Sabum, Susa, Urua; TCTI 1, 668: e-dam-DUNki, Duduli, Sabum, Susa, Urua; TCTI 2, 3795: e-dam-DUNki, Sabum, Susa, etc. On the localizations of Duduli and Sabum, see most recently De Graef 2007: 90-91; Owen 2006-2008; Notizia 2010: 273-277). Comparable toponyms are otherwise unknown, and an interchange of initial e2- and a- is also attested for the Lagashite toponym a-ḫuš, e2-ḫuš(ki) (Falkenstein 1966: 27 with n. 13. Note that a-ḫuš is the ED IIIb writing, while e2-ḫuš(ki) is attested from the Sargonic period onwards). Thus, an identification of e2-dam-sul with a-dam-DUNki is likely. This then supports a reading a-dam-sulki. The ED IIIb orthography e2-dam-sul probably either indicates a place name with initial /ha/, which was lost in the Ur III period, as demonstrated by the Ur III spelling e-dam-DUNki, or a folk-etymological orthography modelled on toponyms beginning with e2-dam-.

The collection of the Manchester University Museum holds two letters dating to the Middle Assyrian period (ca. 1500-1000 BC), one of which shall be presented here. This well-preserved example belongs to the private archive of the official B&amacr;bu-aḫa-iddina and was edited by H. Freydank and C. Saporetti (Freydank & Saporetti 1989: 74; but published earlier by Fish 1952: 14, No. 2). B&amacr;bu-aḫa-iddina is a well-known figure and features prominently in the texts from Assur. Although his title is not known, it is rather likely that he served the king as a high-ranking official and most likely a vizier (Jakob 2002: 58). The text at hand belongs to his private archive, which offers many insights into the procedures and functions of this official, who was in office during the reigns of the Middle Assyrian kings Shalmaneser I and Tukult&imacr;-Ninurta I (Jakob 2002: 282). The tablet is registered as MMUM 35346 in the collection and belongs to the find context Ass. 14410. The only noteworthy damage is the upper left corner, which luckily does not pose any difficulties for the reconstruction of the missing pits and pieces. The surface suffers from minor salt encrustations, which need to be treated in the near future.

Regarding its content the text can be categorized as a letter order (see Llop 2012: 300, No. 45), of which currently 105 examples are known (Llop 2012: 294). It follows the usual format of letters dating to this period, which has been thoroughly discussed by Eva Cancik-Kirschbaum in her edition of the letters from Tall Š&emacr;ḫ Ḥamad (Cancik-Kirschbaum 1996). The main body of the letter is separated by rules from both the address formula and the date. In the manner of “library” texts from that period, the date formula is moved to the very bottom of the reverse. An intriguing feature on Middle Assyrian letters is the indentation of lines adjacent to and on the bottom edge. For this phenomenon, which is not attested in other periods, a satisfactory explanation has still not been found. Cancik-Kirschbaum proposes that the text in this area might have been indented to prevent obstruction of the text when turning the tablet and writing on the reverse (Cancik-Kirschbaum 1996: 52).

The present text was written on behalf of B&amacr;bu-aḫa-iddina (lines 5-6) and deals with wax (ešk&umacr;ru), which B&amacr;bu-aḫa-iddina obviously wants to be inventorised. Unfortunately the letter provides no clues as to the purpose of the wax. It is known that wax was used to fashion figurines, but this is rather unlikely in this case. Another text in the private archive of B&amacr;bu-aḫa-iddina contains the amounts of wax in the possession of various individuals (KAJ 242). This text states that B&amacr;bu-aḫa-iddina gave it to the king (lines Rev. 1-4). But wax had other applications as well in this period. B&amacr;bu-aḫa-iddina employed all kinds of specialists (see Jakob 2002: 58) and several texts attest to preparing perfumes and ointments, such as KAV 194, lines 23-24: lusbû ištu aḫ&amacr;iš šamna luraqqi’&umacr;, “let them be on hand, let them make perfumed oil together” (see CAD R, 420 s.v.ruqqû). Wax, though in later texts, occurs as a carrier of medicinal substances (see CAD I/J, 251 s.v.iškuru).

In what follows I present a hand-copy and new edition of the text, which has been digitized for CDLI by the author in March 2012. For the most recent translation (mainly based on Freydank & Saporetti 1989: 34-35) see Hecker 2006: 107. In the course of the re-edition several new readings and collations came to light, which are marked with an asterisk (*).

Comments

9-10. For the various seals B&amacr;bu-aḫa-iddina used see Freydank 1974, who refers to fragments of letter envelopes bearing seal impressions (see ibid.: 8, plate I, Nos. 6-8). These envelopes also come from the same find context Ass. 14410 as our letter. The expression ša kunukki B&amacr;bu-aḫa-iddina clearly refers to some container, which is sealed by a seal of this official. The expression ša kunukki ša PN here does not refer to a sealed document, but most likely to a storage (container). The texts from B&amacr;bu-aḫa-iddina’s archive give ample evidence for chests and other containers; see, for instance, KAV 98, lines 14-15: lubulta ša <> libbi tupninn&amacr;te ša kunukk&imacr;ya (...), “textiles that are in the chests under my seals (...)”.

Rev. 2. For ṭ&emacr;ma šap&amacr;ru, “to send a report,” see Cancik-Kirschbaum 1996: 67-69, II.4.3. Fish’s hand copy (1952: 14, No. 2) omits the small slanted wedges of the sign UB in šu-up*-ra-ni, which led to the previous reading PA. Note that Cancik-Kirschbaum 1996: 68, based on this misreading, normalizes “ṭ&emacr;ma šuparanni,” which in any case would pose problems, since the letter is addressed to two individuals and therefore a plural form of the imperative is expected (šupr&amacr;ni). CAD A/I, 285 s.v.ak&umacr;kia already suggests “šuprani”, which can now be confirmed.

Rev. 4. Freydank & Saporetti 1989 read ma!-a, which is not supported anymore. The sign(s) resemble the ligature i+na, whose configuration can be compared to line 5. More problematic is the end of this line. The term gi(-)gu-ši-e might be interpreted as synonym to ešk&umacr;ru, “wax” (see CAD I/J, 251 s.v.iškuru). Reading the preposition ina at the beginning of the line makes it rather likely to see in this term a kind of container to store or transport the wax. Therefore the sign GI might be interpreted as classifier for objects made of reed (see also AHw 300 s.v.gušû). The thematic series Ura, which contains on tablets VIII-IX designations for reed (gi) (Landsberger 1959: 3-70), does not attest to any suitable receptacle.

Rev. 6. For a recent discussion of the month name Ḫ&imacr;bur (XII) in the Middle Assyrian calendar see Cancik-Kirschbaum & Johnson 2011-2012: 102-103.

Rev. 7. Further attestations of this eponymy, which probably dates to the accession year of the Middle Assyrian king Tukult&imacr;-Ninurta I (1243-1207) are collected in Freydank 1991: 175-176. Hecker 2006: 107 translates “city governor”.

Several years ago, I published a group of texts belonging to a larger series that recorded labor assignments for teams of workers from the city of Girsu (Allred 2008). At the time of publication, one of those texts, Fs Sigrist 16, no. 4, was available to me in transliteration only. This transliteration was highly problematic, however, as it featured a number of mistakes including both internal computational errors, as well as inconsistencies in relation to the other texts belonging to the series.

As noted in Englund 2010, however, a hand copy of the tablet has appeared in the recently-published YOS 15 as number 105. According to the volume’s catalog, the text belonged to a Robert Garrett of Baltimore, MD. This was almost certainly the former Olympic medalist (he won gold for the shot put and discus, and silver for the high jump and long jump in Athens in 1896) and investment banker who was a well known collector of Middle Eastern manuscripts (Special to the New York Times 1961). The tablet’s current whereabouts remain unknown.

The copy of this text and a corrected transliteration, as well as a commentary on this text, are presented below:

Commentary

Despite the improvements made from having this copy, some problems remain. In the summary given in line 48, the number provided, 188, is still one shy of the actual total of workers tasked out, 189. The error is due to scribal or, more likely, copyist error. Similarly, a number of expressions remain problematic. For instance, in the Ur III corpus, the term gaba-ri, meaning “(tablet) copy,” is not otherwise attested following a personal name as it does in line 35 of this text.

The section following the second total (lines 49-52) is peculiar (Allred 2008: 17). Normally, the tablets in this group conclude with several la2-ia3 entries, listing the remaining workers from each overseer (nu-banda3) not assigned a task. Some tablets will also list workers qualified as “having not gone out from the city” (iri-ta nu-e3), but in most cases this number is not linked to a particular overseer (e.g., ASJ 18, 224 [HSM 6434] and MVN 11, 85, but cf. Fs. Sigrist 17, no. 5). Our tablet, however, has two iri-ta entries (without the nu-e3), and but a single la2-ia3 entry.

The meanings of the terms la2-ia3 and iri-ta nu-e3 are difficult to understand. It is easy to presume that the la2-ia3 workers were simply those remaining workers who, for whatever reason, were not assigned to a particular task. For instance, the total workers in Fs. Sigrist 16, no. 3, is 141. From those, 116 were assigned to tasks while 25 others are qualified as la2-ia3; presumably these 25 were not assigned tasks that day, but still had to be counted for administrative reasons.

Curiously, though, a number of texts include being sick (du2 or du2-ra) among work assignments. For instance, in the above text both Alla and Lu-Ea were qualified as such. If la2-ia3 workers represented those remaining workers who were not assigned a task, then why were sick workers not included among them and instead placed among the assigned workers? While the answer remains unclear, one possible solution is to speculate that sick workers were still compensated in some way, while remaining (la2-ia3) workers were not (some evidence for this is seen in Heimpel 2009a: 59-63).

More vexing is the case of the workers qualified as iri-ta nu-e3. As is clear from the above text, the expression iri-ta nu-e3 cannot simply be a synonym for la2-ia3; when added together, the seven workers called iri-ta nu-e3 along with the two labeled as la2-ia3 and the 188 who were given work assignments totals exactly the 197 workers given at the beginning of this text. Nevertheless, it seems certain that the iri-ta nu-e3 workers, like the la2-ia3 workers, were not assigned tasks. Maekawa (1988: 70) suggested that the workers who had not gone from the city were “a kind of reserve labor force” but it is unclear why such a force would be needed.

This small passage has been translated differently by various editors in the past, especially concerning the fate of king Zuzu, depending on the interpretation of the reference of the verb ha-lam “to destroy”:

Cooper (1986: 42):
“Because the king of Akšak attacked, Eanatum, nominee of Ningirsu, beat back Zuzu, king of Akšak, from the Antasura of Ningirsu to Akshak, and destroyed it (Akshak).”

Frayne (2008: 147):
“In the year of the offensive of Akšak E-anatum, nominee of the god Nin&gcirc;irsu, crushed Zuzu, king of Akšak, (all the way) from Antasur of Nin&gcirc;irsu to Akšak, and killed him.”

These events are reported in a shorter version, without the mentioning of Zuzu in another inscription (Frayne 2008: 151), the translations do not differ:

Although this course of events is not narrated continuously in the inscription, but interspersed with other exploits, this episode is generally reconstructed in this way:

1. Akšak forms an alliance with Kiš and Mari.
2. This coalition under the leadership of Zuzu of Akšak penetrates into Lagašite territory.
3. The coalition is defeated by Eanatum at the Antasur.
4. Zuzu is beaten back to Akšak.

This narrative seems to be quite straightforward. But Steinkeller (1993, 118 fn. 20) again has a point by describing it: “The vague language of the passage make it most unlikely that he followed Zuzu all the way to Akshak. It seems certain that, had Eanatum taken Akshak, he would have stated it in quite unequivocal terms.”

Some observations further emphasize this point. Besides the passages above, ha-lam is attested ten times in the Lagaš-I-corpus, including one damaged, unclear context (Behrens and Steible 1983, the sigla of the inscriptions are from Frayne 2008):

Unfortunately, the attestations for the verb do not clarify the situation. Its distribution shows, that it can be used indiscriminately with animate and inanimate objects. No constraints concerning one class of nouns is detectable and therefore its object can be animate (Zuzu) or inanimate (Akšak). This use of ha-lam differs from the use of hul, which is used in the royal inscriptions only as a verb to describe the destructions of places (Behrens and Steible 1983: 163). The semantic range of ha-lam is wider and it is therefore quite nondescript.

Another verb used in the inscriptions is gaz. “to beat/crush” (Behrens and Steible 1983: 134-135). The verb alone has a meaning “crush/kill” (Behrens and Steible 1983: 134-135). The sigla of the inscriptions are from Frayne 2008):

RIME 1.9.3.1 (P222399), viii 1-3:
šu e-na-zi, ša3 &Gcirc;IŠ.KUŠU2ki-ka i3-gaz
“(His people) will raise a hand against him, and he will be killed within &Gcirc;iša (Umma).”

RIME 1.9.5.1, vi 26-29:
nam2-lu2-ulu3-uru-na, šu u3-na-zi, ša3 uru-na-ka, ha-ni-gaz-zex(AB2.ŠA3.GE)
“May the people of his city, after rising up against him, kill him there within his city.”

Used with the terminative, the verb has a meaning “to beat back, repel” (Behrens and Steible 1983: 134-135, the sigla of the inscriptions are from Frayne 2008), with the terminative depicting the local endpoint of the action (Balke 2006: 198 nr. 366):

This last passage is sometimes translated differently. Some editors believe that it means that Urlumma was killed in the middle of &Gcirc;iša(Umma) by Enmetena. If that were true, the passage concerning Zuzu could also be seen under this aspect, because it is the same grammatical construction. The argument for this interpretation is, that only a few lines later in the inscription (iii 28-37), Il, his nephew, gains the rulership of &Gcirc;iša(Umma), and this should only be possible if Urlumma had been killed. That the death of his precursor was a necessary requirement for Il’s ascension is a modern interpretation with no definite evidence. On the contrary, Lambert (1965: 83) already showed that the verb form used in iii 37 (šu e-ma-ti) is reflexive, and must therefore be translated as: “he took the rulership for himself,” which implies that another person claimed the throne. Neither the death nor the survival of Urlumma can be proven without doubt (Steiner 1986: 242).

Another argument against the translation of gaz + terminative as "to kill" is the parallel construction of the passages RIME 1.9.3.1 (P222399), viii 2-3 and RIME 1.9.5.1, iii 17-18:

The passage RIME 1.9.3.1 (P222399), viii 2-3 is without doubt to be translated as “he will be killed in the middle of &Gcirc;iša (Umma).” If the passage RIME 1.9.5.1, iii 17-18 would mean the same, why is it not constructed in the same manner (gaz + locative)? The construction of gaz + terminative must therefore be translated differently.

More important for the Fate of Zuzu are the only two attested passages (Behrens and Steible 1983: 351-352), where a foreign ruler is definitely killed by a sovereign of Lagaš:

Not only the clarity of the phraseology is noteworthy, it occurs only in the two inscriptions that mention the above quoted episode with the coalition of Akšak. It is also always mentioned before the events of the Akšak-expedition. The reasons for this fixed order of events is not clear (Cooper 1983: 25). Eanatum explicitly says that he destroyed a city (hul) and killed its ruler (ug7). It seems that the afterwards occurring ha-lam was chosen purposely (instead of gaz and ug7), to describe the events concerning Zuzu and Akšak in the most ambiguous way that still sounded like a victory.

It is thus highly probable that Zuzu, king of Akšak survived his military enterprise. We do not know if he was identical with Puzuzu, who vanquished hamazi, as Steinkeller (2013: 149) suggests. King Zuzu may have been beaten back and his city destroyed, but Akšak played an active role in ED IIIb-politics after Eanatum, again in combination with Kiš . Our notion of his demise is based on Lagašite rhetoric, which itself is composed of the most nondescript terms. Thus I propose the following translation:

Cuneiform texts found their way to museum collections not only through official and scientifically conducted excavations, but in many instances through the antiquities market. Antiquities dealers in the second half of the 19th and the early 20th centuries played a crucial part as intermediaries for several European and US tablet collections. Additionally, cuneiform tablets often do not come to us in one piece. They are broken and shattered and pieces of one tablet might end up in various collections and subsequently might be treated as separate textual records, not recognised at first as pieces of one and the same text witness. A good case in point are the witnesses(sic) to the Old Babylonian composition “Pabilsag’s Journey to Nippur.” These are kept in three different collections, the University of Pennsylvania Museum in Philadelphia, the Hilprecht Collection in Jena, and the Arkeologi Müsezi in Istanbul.

Let us have a brief glance at the publication of the witnesses of this composition (the museum numbers are given in brackets:

It is clear from this list that every single fragment was published separately. It was recognised only much later that at least four of these texts (the fragment in Istanbul needs to be verified) belong to one and the same tablet. Hence this composition is known, so far, only from one manuscript. Hand-copies often betray this fact and make re-joining based on drawings almost impossible, except for the fact that re-joining is possible due the respective fragment's content. Without proper images or representations re-joining of fragments, which are housed in various collections, is hardly possible in terms of their physical appearance.

In the case of the afore-mentioned Sumerian composition it is, in particular, the palaeography, which allows for proposing a possible (direct) join, which then can be verified on the object itself. But such physical joins are hardly possible, when fragments are housed in various collections. Therefore, scaled images are our best chance to propose candidates for possible joins.

In June 2013 the cuneiform texts in the National Museums Scotland in Edinburgh were digitised by CDLI staff at the University of Oxford (Kathryn Kelley and Klaus Wagensonner). The collection holds a very good selection of tablets dating to various periods. Besides texts usually found in cuneiform collections such as, for instance, administrative texts dating to the Ur III period, most notably are several Sumerian literary compositions, among others an important single witness of the composition "Nanna-Su'en's Journey to Nippur" dating to the Old Babylonian period.

A tablet of particular interest for this short note is the well-preserved fragment of a Sumerian literary composition, which is accessioned as NMS A.1909.405.27. Judging from the fragment curvature it originally belonged to a rather elongated tablet. The text is known for quite some time now. Is was published in handcopy by Stephen Langdon in his Babylonian Liturgies (1913). Half a century later Adam Falkenstein edited the fragment together with three other witnesses, which belong to a song of praise for the god Šulpa’e (ms. D). The other three sources available to him are:

Already in his edition Falkenstein pointed out that mss. “C und D stammen dagegen sicher, wenn nicht aus einer einzigen Fundstelle, so doch aus einer einheitlichen Schreiberschule, wie die Übereinstimmung in der Handhabung der syllabischen Schreibweise verrät” (Falkenstein 1963: 13). Falkenstein’s statement seems to be based solely on the orthography of both fragments and not as much on their physical appearance. Indeed, as Falkenstein states, both fragments contain the text of the composition in syllabic or non-orthographic Sumerian. Since non-orthographic versions are comparatively rare, the orthographic approach alone is quite indicative for both fragments originally being part of the same tablet. ETCSL 4.31.1 (Šulpa’e A) proposes a connection between these two fragments.

This assumption can now be confirmed thanks to images of both witnesses. Currently the collection of cuneiform artefacts kept in the Musée du Louvre in Paris is being catalogued and digitised by CDLI staff. Among the tablets imaged so far is also ms. C of the afore-mentioned composition. With both tablets being kept in separate collection, it is not possible to verify exactly, whether they join directly or represent loose fragments of one tablet.

Fig. 1: Sketch of the join

As mentioned earlier, NMS A.1909.405.27 + AO 3925 (Fig. 1) is a rather elongated tablet of the im.gid2.da type. Since the song of praise to the god Šulpa’e on the Edinburgh manuscript is followed by another, much shorter, composition, it is difficult to “join” the contents of both fragments, even with the help of the other two manuscripts, which are written in the usual Sumerian orthography.

In my forthcoming article on Gula the healing goddess and the dog handlers from the Drehem texts, I observe that one of the overseers of the dog handlers related to Gula, Nawir-ilum the medical practitioner (for whom see Wu Yuhong 2008), was dead for nearly a year (he died in Šu-Suen 8 x; see CUSAS 3, 251 rev. 3, and possibly also CUSAS 3, 250, on tablet Rev. 1; for offerings to the libation place of Nawir-ilum, the sa2-du11 ki-a-nag Na-wi-ir-ilum, see CUSAS 3, 982, 4, dated to Ibbi-Suen 2), while the scribes continued to include his name in the texts designating him the overseer of the handlers of Gula’s dogs (MVN 13, 89, dated to Šu-Suen 8 xii; UDT 171 dated to Šu-Suen 9 iii; PDT 1, 7, dated to Šu-Suen 9 ix). It evidently took the scribes (or rather their administration?) quite some time to correctly identify the new overseer and acknowledge the change in office; Nawir-ilum was only ‘officially’ succeeded a year after his death by a certain Šu-Mamitum in Šu-Suen 9 x (AUCT 1, 224).

This delay raises two possibilities: either there was a communication problem within the administrative sphere, and news circulated slowly, or the succession took longer, and there was no immediate replacement to take over. In both cases, there is an apparent procrastination in the administrative network, of the scribes and their overseers, of the administrators, or of the administrative machinery generally. Explaining the delay as a result of late replacement would indicate that for the continuing functioning of government the overseers were not so important. The accounting machinery could operate without them for a year or perhaps longer.

In both cases we should reconsider our belief in the rigorousness of the Ur III state administration, and welcome Steinkeller’s suggestion that administrative texts were written to document a bureaucratic reality rather than to provide an accurate version of the actual events that took place within it (2004: 68). The need to record an overseer in such transactions shows the stiffness of the Ur III bureaucracy; on the other hand the fabrication of an overseer - a dead one in this case - shows the route administrators chose to circumvent this bureaucratic hurdle.

Approaching cylinder seals depends on the research questions that are being asked. Seals can be studied from quite different research angles. The basis for the study of sealing practices and seal use, for instance, is not the physical seal itself, but ancient seal impressions on clay tablets, locks, door and jar sealings etc. For clay tablets, in particular, the way of impressing a seal onto the surface of the tablet and the particular location of a sealing were not arbitrary and varied not just throughout the millennia and from place to place, but depended also on the type of document. The study of the sealing practice on clay tablets is hampered (1) by the lack of a proper photographic documentation of sealed surfaces and (2) by the omission of sealings on published handcopies for the sake of better readability. This lack of information makes a proper study of the sealing practices, for instance, on documents dating to the Ur III and Old Babylonian periods a quite difficult endeavour. Many handcopies reduce the “seal data” to the textual aspect of the seals and therefore only provide drawings of seal legends. The respective seal’s iconogrpahy is often omitted or accounted for in separate studies. The same applies to the way a seal is impressed onto the tablet’s surface. An essay on copying sealed documents is forthcoming by the author (Wagensonner [forthcoming]).

In many respects physical seals pose less issues. Printed catalogues and studies of larger groups of seals frequently put their focus solely on the iconography of the seals. Data on the raw materials of the seals is frequently of less importance and data on certain aspects as, for instance, the grain of a stone, is omitted entirely. But it is the latter, which sometimes might have influenced the choice of a specific stone, not solely for its color, but also for its texture and translucency.

Representations of (cylinder) seals in printed seal catalogues are based on modern seal impressions. Therefore, the afore-mentioned material aspect of the seals is completely lost. In a few cases the seal cylinders themselves are photographed and printed. But these representations merely give a clue to the appearance of a certain seal.

In January 2014 CDLI staff at the University of Oxford started to digitise the collection of cylinder seals in the Ashmolean Museum of the University of Oxford and preparing meta-data for inclusion into the CDLI database. The Ashmolean Museum houses a rather substantial and varied collection of seals, which amounts to approximately 1,050 individual seals. These were catalogued by B. Buchanan in 1966; seals that were acquired by the museum in the 1960s and 1970s were catalogued and discussed in a joint article by P. R. S. Moorey and O. R. Gurney in 1978. As indicated before, representations of the individual seals are accessible through black and white photographs of modern impressions. Information about the colour and type of stone is just given in the descriptions.

In the subsequent paragraphs I aim at discussing a method which combines both the iconographical and/or epigraphic aspect as well as a proper representation of the material a seal was cut from. This note contains a progress report on the imaging technique that is used.

CDLI has developed an imaging technique for seals, which is based on a technique introduced by the West Semitic Research Project. However, CDLI tried to follow a less cost-intensive approach for the capture of cylinder seals, in order to make this method also interesting for smaller collections, which are not willing to invest in expensive equipment. The result is a digital roll-out of the seal, which, in contrast to photographs of seal impressions, provides data on the iconography and the grain of the used raw material.

Method 1

One method uses a turn-table that spins the cylinder seal around while being captured by a stationary camera. The set-up for imaging the cylinder seals is rather simple (Fig. 1):

a turn-table (either operated by a computer or electronically)

a tripod, on which a camera is mounted

a light-source

a DSLR camera with a macro lens or any camera with the capability of producing macro images

a software that remotely controls the camera and is capable of doing time-lapse images (e.g., Smartshooter).

Fig. 1: Working station with turn-table and a DLSR camera using remote control

For this method it is necessary to mark the centre of the turn-table in order to place the cylinder seal accurately. Otherwise, the camera might lose its focus on the object. Due to the varying thickness of cylinder seals it is advantageous to attach a sheet of paper with concentric circles in the centre of the turn-table (Fig. 2).

The remote software allows not just for various camera settings as shutter speed or exposure, but, in particular, for time-lapse capture. There is a wide range of commercial software available in order to fulfil this task. For the digitisation of the cylinder seals in the Ashmolean Museum the program Smart Shooter was used (Fig. 3). The turn-table (custom-built by Kirk Martinez at the University of Southampton) needs about one minute for a full circle. While turning, the camera takes 40 images of the cylinder seal (Fig. 4). This amount of photos is sufficient to fully capture the seal. In order to ensure an even interval between the captures, the images are stored on the memory card in the camera and hence not directly transferred to the connected computer.

Fig. 3: Camera remote control via software ‘Smart Shooter’

The processing of the raw data to a digital roll-out poses difficulties at first (Fig. 4). Hardly any panorama or stitching software is capable of dealing efficiently with the differences in lighting between the various shots. A rather useful software is the stitching program PTGui, which allows for plenty of settings and adjustments.

Fig. 4: Raw data of seal Buchanan 1966: No. 563

Method 2

One of the main issues using a turn-table is the danger of losing the focus while the seal is turning. In order to avoid this, the turn-table can be moved in steps (for instance by 5 degrees) before checking the focus. So far, this can be achieved manually, and hopefully can be automatised in future. But there are other possibilities, which do not necessarily result in any increase in time and effort in order to reach the final result.

Using a soft support and mounted a DSLR camera directly above the seal can be carefully turned by hand and photographed. Good results can be gained from turning it by approximately 15-18 % between each shot.

But this method also allows for further adjustments. Since the seal is turned manually, the capture quality can be increased. A worthwhile is method is to produce High Dimension Range (HDR) photos in each position. In simple terms, HDR photos combine several (mostly three: a short, normal, and long) exposures in order to gain more information in shadows. This has also an advantageous effect on the representation of the color of the stone (Fig. 5b).

The final stage of producing a complete representation of an individual cylinder seal is to add the top and bottom sides of the cylinder. These are photographed separately. Interestingly, not many catalogues provide any representations on those sides. They do not only show the cross-section of a cylinder seal, but furthermore provide data on the central drill-hole, and so forth. For instance, there are plenty of examples, which show that the drill-holes are worn out by being hung on a cord.

Addendum

Last but not least, using either a turn-table or rotating the object manually, this method can also be used for cone-shaped objects such as foundation pegs. Many collections of cuneiform artifacts house such objects. Up to now the representation of such objects in the CDLI database follows the usual “fat-cross” representation by juxtaposing 6-8 images of the cone's outer side next to top and bottom (Fig. 6a). However, juxtaposing does not present the text in a “fluid” manner. Using a sufficient amount of images and the afore-mentioned method it is possible to gather a complete rendering of the inscription (Fig. 6b).

Fig. 6: The cone AN 1929-777 in usual "fat-cross" representation (left) and stitched result (right)

CDLN 2014:7Moudhy Al-Rashid: A Note on the Meaning of h&umacr;ṣu and huṣṣu

Two terms, h&umacr;ṣu and huṣṣu, often precede a well-known expression for anxiety, hīp (GAZ) libbi (ŠA3) “Heartbreak”, but despite their frequent distribution with Heartbreak, their meanings remain unclear. In his brief study of Heartbreak in connection with epilepsy, Stol notes that this variation occurs only occasionally in the medical corpus; however, Heartbreak is always preceded by one of these terms in “strictly literary texts”, including prayers (Stol 1993: 30). This brief note will address previous interpretations of h&umacr;ṣu and huṣṣu and, in relation to their regular concurrence with Heartbreak, will point out some nuances that may shed light on their meaning and usage.

When preceding the expression hīp libbi, the term huṣṣu (usually written as huṣṣa or huṣṣi) seems to be in apposition to the expression that follows, possibly in a hendiadys construction, whereas the term h&umacr;ṣ, when preceding the expression, stands in a genitive relationship as the regens in the construct state. The CAD translates h&umacr;ṣu as “a physical pain” and “an emotional hurt”, and a philological note appended to the entry suggests that originally, it was “probably a hendiadys construction denoting a specific abdominal pain” (CAD H 260). Geller gives a more specific explanation of h&umacr;ṣu as “a type of stomach cramp” (Geller 2010a: 151). Von Soden treats h&umacr;ṣu and huṣṣu/a/i together in a single entry in AHw where h&umacr;ṣu/huṣṣu in the phrase hu-uṣ(-ṣu/ṣa/ṣi) hīpi libbi is translated as “Leibschmerzen”, or stomach-ache (AHw 361). Von Soden’s entry in AHw treats huṣṣu and h&umacr;ṣ as different forms of the same noun, which I follow here.

The addition of this term has been interpreted as a stylistic, rather than semantic, choice. Stol explains the presence or absence of h&umacr;ṣ or huṣṣa in medical texts as a stylistic scribal feature and adds that a Neo-Babylonian medical commentary (GCCI II 406: 10-11) shows that later scribes no longer understood the meaning of the word (Stol 1993: 30 n63). The Neo-Babylonian commentary in question is intended to clarify the following line in Tablet 13 of the Diagnostic Handbook: [DIŠ ...] ⌜hu⌝-uṣ-ṣa GAZ ŠA3 TUKU.MEŠ-šu ŠU dXV – ŠU [...] “[If ...] he perpetually has huṣṣa, Heartbreak, (then it is) Hand of Ištar, Hand of [...]” (Diagnostic Handbook 13: 161’).

While the above translation is only tentative, these lines may provide some useful information about the term huṣṣa and should not be dismissed as evidence of scribal confusion simply because their meaning eludes modern scholars.

The first excerpted line seems to equate huṣṣa with something that is burning. It is worth noting that the heart and innards can be the subject of kab&amacr;bu “to burn” in a transitive usage, as in an incantation whose goals include preventing the heart from burning the supplicant: ŠA3-ba la i-kab-ba-ab-ka “so that your heart may not burn you” (KAR 238 r. 14). Similarly, a report from an &amacr;šipu includes this symptom (Thompson 1900: 235 A 13 [83-1-18, 232]).

To return to the commentary, huṣṣa is then further elaborated by ṣâlim “quarreling”. In fact, the noun ṣaltu “quarrel, disagreement, affray” (CAD Ṣ 86-87), which derives from the same root as the verb ṣâlu, frequently appears with Heartbreak in therapeutic texts and incantations. For example, in an anti-witchcraft ritual addressed to Marduk, the symptomatology section pairs Heartbreak with ṣaltu “strife” as follows: hu-uṣ GAZ ŠA3 TUKU.TUKU-ši ina E2ṣal-tu ina SILA pu-uh-pu-uh-hu-u2 GAR-šu2 “he continually has h&umacr;ṣ (of) Heartbreak; in the home there is strife, in the streets, quarrelling” (AMT 21/2 read with BAM 3, 232: 17; Abusch and Schwemer 2011: Text 8.6; cf. Stol 1993: 29 for more references). Thus, the relationship between ṣâlu/ṣaltu and a term that regularly precedes Heartbreak is not entirely random. The lines in the commentary may thus elaborate huṣṣa as a condition or symptom that figuratively burns and relates to – perhaps, causes or is caused by – strife and quarrelling. The meaning of huṣṣa may have in fact been known to the later scribes and, by extension, its use in medical therapeutic texts and other material, was a semantic, rather than stylistic, choice that modified or in some way clarified the type or intensity of Heartbreak being experienced.

Furthermore, the commentary does hint at a meaning that accords with one conceivable, though debatable, interpretation of the term huṣṣu. The term may be understood as deriving from the same root as the verb huṣṣum “to anger, harrass, irritate, trouble”, a D stem of the hypothetical root *h-’-ṣ whose basic stem would have the meaning “to be angry”. J. L. Boyd (1983) offers an interpretation of this verb in a letter from Šamaš-hazir to Hammurabi concerning legal contestations over a field (TCL 7, 58). Boyd’s interpretation pivots on the reading of the verb in line 15: i/uh-ta-na-AZ-x understood by him as uh-ta-na-as-⌜si⌝, a Dtn of *hi&amacr;ṣum with a possessive suffix. He draws supporting data for this meaning from parallel roots in other Semitic languages, ancient and modern (see Boyd 1983: 246). While Boyd’s interpretation is far from certain and the reconstruction of the root *h-’-ṣ is open to speculation, his brief article does offer a meaning of huṣṣa that seems to correspond to its usage with h&imacr;p libbi.

Following this interpretation of the verb huṣṣum, a noun derived from the same root would have a related meaning, such as “anger, irritation”. Is it possible that the meaning of “pain” for h&umacr;ṣu and huṣṣu derives from the fact that pain causes anger or irritation, and vice versa? Logically and semantically, the two are related. This meaning further coheres with the distribution of the terms h&umacr;ṣ and huṣṣu with Heartbreak. As noted above, the terms regularly precede h&imacr;p libbi in non-medical texts, but not in medical therapeutic texts (Stol 1993: 30). It is perhaps to be expected for more lyrical and subjective genres to include a word that decribes pain or anger, whereas the more scientific and objective genres would omit this aspect in favour of the more straightforward term for the condition of Heartbreak.

As noted at the start of this note, there is still no consensus on the meaning of h&umacr;ṣ or h&umacr;ṣṣa. In most occurrences with Heartbreak, these two terms seem to refer to an emotional pain, perhaps akin to anger or irritation, that would be expected to accompany an anxiety state. It is further possible that the emotional pain described by these terms should not be separated from the physiological pain that it may give rise to. Given the consistent overlap in the libbu’s function as a physical organ and as the seat of thought and emotion, the association of this anger-related pain with the heart and belly may locate the experience of discomfort or distress caused by anger or anxiety in this region of the body.

CDLN 2014:6Changyu Liu: A Note on the Regular Offering to Ninlil at Tummal

In ASJ 8, Setsuko Oh’e gave a systematic discussion of the agricultural festival in Tummal (Oh’e 1986: 121-132). In recent years, an increasing number of new texts have become available on this subject. In this article, I will focus on the regular offering (sa2-du11) to Ninlil at Tummal by collecting all related documents and correcting several errors made in previous publications.

There are currently 13 Ur III administrative documents concerning the regular offering to Ninlil at Tummal, all of which are from Drehem, dated from Š 42 to ŠS 2. According to the date of these texts, they can be divided into two categories: one category of documents dated on the 29th day of the month (u4 30-la2-1-kam); the others, simply contained in the monthly record (iti 1-kam). Based on terms for expenditures, the documents may also be subdivided into two different categories: the first one with the terms “zi-ga / ša3 Tum-ma-al / ki PN”; the second, with the terms “ša3 Tum-ma-al / ki PN-ta ba-zi.”

The species of livestock accounted for in the documents are all barley-fed sheep and goats (mainly udu niga and maš2 gal niga, as well as a few gukkal niga, u8 niga, u8 gukkal niga, and sila4 niga). There were typically 30 sheep and/or goats recorded in all monthly records, 29 sheep and goats in all texts dated on the 29th day. In each transaction, the number of sheep is certainly higher than that of the goats, with two transactions (TCND 196 and TCND 203) transpiring entirely without goats.

There are three disbursal officials involved in these transactions, initially Ašne’u (in Š 42), then En-di&gcirc;ir&gcirc;u (from Š 45 to AS 8), and finally Kurbilak (ŠS 2 and unknown). It should be noted that the texts involving Kurbilak also include a &gcirc;iri3 official Enum-Adad, the “šar2-ra-ab-du”-official (RA 79: 26 16), but the texts involving the other two disbursal officials are without &gcirc;iri3 officials (also see Tsouparopoulou 2009:102-106 and Tsouparopoulou 2013). Additionally, the names of the years were destroyed in two texts (PDT 2, 1268 and P313095 [unpubl.]).

The following are my corrections and comments for part of the texts:

TCND 196: line 4 should be iti 1-kam, not u4! 1-kam. The sign iti is clear, and the tablet is surely a monthly record. W. Heimpel’s review for this publication did not refer to this error. (Heimpel 1994: 278-282)

TCND 199: the end of line 3 lacked la2, correctly sa2-du11dNin-lil2-la2, by rechecking its photograph in CDLI.

RA 9: 48 SA 99: the obverse cannot be currently available, and was probably destroyed. According to the parallel texts, it may be recovered with a total of 30 sheep and/or goats on the basis of its monthly record. The end of line 1 of the reverse lacked la2, as well.

Nisaba 8, 131: line 4 should be sa2-du11dNin-lil2-la2, not ki inim-dNin-lil2-la2.

AUCT 1, 694: line 5 should be iti 1-kam, not u4 1-kam. (for the error, see Sigrist 1984: 53)

PDT 2, 1189: line 1 can be probably recovered with 20 [udu] niga; line 2 can be certainly recovered with 10-la2-[1] maš2 gal niga; the sum of animals is 29, matching the 29th day. The end of line 3 lacked la2. Finally, the left edge should be 30-la2-1 ⌜udu⌝, not 30 ⌜udu⌝.

RA 79, 26 16: for the discussion of the title šar2-ra-ab-du, see Garfinkle 2003: 171.

PDT 2, 1268: this text’s year name was totally destroyed. Based on the presence of disbursal official Kurbilak, it probably belongs to ŠS. In addition, the ends of lines 1 and 2 lacked niga, and line 3 lacked la2. Finally, the left edge can be recovered with [30 (udu)].

P313095 (unpubl.): The reverse of this unpublished text from a private collection containing the name of the disbursal official, month, and year is almost destroyed. I would like to thank Prof. R. Englund and CDLI for providing me with the tablet’s photograph and agreeing to publish this tablet here.

In his 1980 article, Tohru Gomi transliterated the first line of text 35 as an animal (kir11 ga) followed by a personal name: šu-ku-bu-um; his hand copy confirmed this interpretation (Gomi 1980:49). I recently collated this text from the scan image available on CDLI and was able to identify the two signs between ga and bu as gal and tab producing the compound “gal-tab-bu-um.” This then appears to represent a qualification to kir11 ga with the meaning “fat-tailed (extra big tail) suckling female lamb” (see Steinkeller 1995b:51, 59).

One of the weaknesses of CDLI files has been their limited annotation of entries concerning seals and sealing in ancient Mesopotamia. Some years ago, Christina Tsouparopoulou, then a CDLI research associate at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Berlin, entered to a dedicated relational database the records of the seal impressions found on texts from Drehem, ancient Puzrish-Dagan, that had formed the core of her 2008 Cambridge dissertation The Material Face of Bureaucracy: Writing, Sealing and Archiving Tablets for the Ur III State at Drehem. The 601 composite seals (that is, seals reconstructed based exclusively on their use on ancient documents), associated with some 1415 tablets registered in the CDLI catalogue, were described with a series of philological, archaeological and art historical qualifiers that Christina felt were essential to capture the detailed nuances in the (once) physical artifacts. I agreed, and agree, that in particular such elements as those describing the iconography, form, production technology, and practice of use of cylinder seals are essential for their in-depth study; but I had to be realistic, when Christina’s position in Berlin ended, about the amount of resources we would be able to dedicate to a seals catalogue, and I thus decided to streamline it for continuation at CDLI, dispensing with its involved archaeological apparatus. Seals are now entered as any other CDLI artifact, but are treated as composite reconstructions, and, in the case of existing objects, as physical artifacts, though still essentially composites. These two categories are noted as “CDLI Seals n (composite)” and “CDLI Seals n (physical)”, whereby n is a six-digit number that, in ‘S123456’, constitutes an artificial seal ID in our catalogue. It may be noted that specialists such as Rudi Mayr identified many instances of the re-use of the same physical seal. In these cases, each seal generation represents a new artifact, and therefore a new seal ID number with associated witnesses, even where the expert will identify two legends, one under the other, on the same seal.

The major interest, and given the nature of our files, capability of CDLI to contribute to seals research lies in our electronic transliterations and thus in the seals that, beginning in the ED IIIb period with some consistency, combined pictorial and geometric scenes with legends. These framed inscriptions as a rule named the seal owner, his profession or educational standing, his patronymic and, looking up in the Mesopotamian hierarchy, his administrative affiliations. They form a category of CDLI entries not originally envisioned at our conception, namely that of an ethereal composition that is related to the concept of an Urtext, but that in the case of seals and including brick stamps as the first cases of “printing presses,” is grounded in a physical artifact. Mesopotamian cylinder seals, as we know, are found in innumerable collections, with and without owner legends; I personally have no idea how many there are. In the great majority of exemplars with legends, the seals themselves appear to be lost, with exceedingly few matches having been made between actual seals and impressions on texts; the lost seals, however, are often fully reconstructable based on one, up to as many as 620 (Umma’s Lukalla = S002932) impressions found on tablets in collections worldwide. More conventional composite texts now, or about to be registered in much the same way in the CDLI catalogue include royal (led by Daniel Foxvog), and, in time, lexical, and literary texts. Our ultimate internal justification for conventionalized composition entries is their use in creating cleaner data sets, since irregularities in basic text entry, lexicon and sign readings, are much more visible when things line up than when viewed individually; but their use in online research will be of greater interest to colleagues and will, hopefully, complement the available resources of the BDTNS (PI Manuel Molina cleansed BDTNS’ seal legends some time ago, and these are searchable as separate entities in his files).

In the past several months then, I have spent quite a bit of my time, with the undying scripting support of Eunice Yuh-Jie Chen, graduate student of UCLA’s Department of Computer Science, trying to remedy this failing, and can refer users to a prelimary CDLI page dedicated to the topic that presents some of the new search capabilities this work has made possible. In our main search page, the field “Seal ID” can be cross-referenced with other fields by typing in “S”, and in full search results pages, seal IDs are listed and color-coded as hyperlinks in the catalogue list to the left of associated images and transliterations; for instance, clicking on the ID S000003 in the entry for AUCT 1, 151, brings the user to a scroll listing of 29 witness texts, headed by their composite entry.. In raw numbers, CDLI catalogue now contains entries documenting ca. 27,550 Mesopotamian artifacts related to seals and sealing: 21,000 represent inscribed tablets whose seal impressions include owner legends; 5,250 are discrete composites derived from these impressions; and currently just 1050 are entered physical seals. As is to be expected, both in terms of its ancient administrative and legal apparatus, and in terms of the open access initiatives embraced since the commencement of data entry by Marcel Sigrist, Bram Jagersma and Remco de Maaijer, substantially furthered by BDTNS, then also by CDLI collaborators, an imposing majority of these entries derive from Ur III texts (26,000 total entries, and 5,100 composites--which can be noted to discussions of literacy and the administrative workforce in this short phase of Babylonian history; these files include the Irisagrig seal legends recently published by David Owen in Nisaba 15). Poorly accessible for harvest, aggregation and re-use have been the files of Old Babylonian, neo-Babylonian and neo-Assyrian specialists. The present work should preface a much larger initiative to order these hallmark administrative tools beginning with a full catalogue of all physical seals, focusing on seals with legends, and then inclusion in CDLI of transliterations of the other big sealing periods, if and when the artifacts and electronic files become available to us.

Eunice’s working interface, scripted out of CDLI’s full C-ATF file dump, was very simple. All identifed seal legends were isolated, duplicate legends merged and written into single, sortable lines in the form:

now = S004859; at the same time, this merge demonstrates the creeping hypercorrections that must be addressed in later stages of this work, since P101851 was a Nippur slave sale contract sealed by an Ur-Dumuzi, but certainly not the son of Ur-Nigar, as in the other two witnesses both from Umma. Such errors have many fathers, but high among them in impact was the fact that, to make things manageable, we removed tags in the transliterations that indicated (occasionally doubtful) text reconstruction.

Expert users will notice many such mistakes and omissions in CDLI seal annotations. But I tend to finish stages of such bulk tasks in the database, and post the results online “to have something to look at.” An initial parsing of text proveniences has demonstrated to me, nevertheless, that the composite entries could, with exceptions of course, assume the same provenience as their witness artifacts. I suspect, further, that exact strings can be interpreted to act in a highly discriminatory fashion to keep discrete seal legends linked to single users, i.e., that the availability of better prosopographical tools will not result in very substantial numbers of differentiations in existing seal identifications. I cannot address the question of whether better iconographic annotations will lead to many such necessary disambiguations in future; probably not, but such legend-duplicates as those of the physical artifacts registered here suggest that we do have a problem. The same iconography issue can be seen in seal impressions. The legend usz-mu / dub-sar / dumu lugal-sa6-ga has in some instances legend cases that are of the same length (P104992, P125183 = S005503), in others with the first two cases short and the last one longer, framing a small figure P118486, P108308, P119870, P120363: human, P101491: a bird, P100596, P102644: a griffin!) standing behind a larger one (= S005502 & S005503, all from Umma).

A few random notes to “CDLI Seals” follow.

As with the earlier general cleansing of CDLI’s Ur III files (CDLN 2011:004), the seals work was not well served by current photo documentation; images recently done by Klaus Wagensonner, for instance of the Ryland texts (compare P130452 hand copy and photo!), have demonstrated the pattern recognition advantages of raking light imaging using digital cameras and RTI scanning technology (I can report on a bridge technique taught me by UCLA graduate student Michael Heinle to improve chances of reading difficult seal impressions: copy the online image to desktop, load in Photoshop and invert the colors). But even old hand copies, or more common flatbed or camera imaging, are a great improvement over nothing at all. It is, for example, common in transliteration publications that two-column legends are listed as a single column; this led to duplication entries that will in future need to be reduced to a single, two-column legend. In another instance, the common ensi2-seal of Ayakalla of Umma is found in sixty examples (both writings a-a-kal-la and a-kal-la) with col. i l. 2 lugal kal-ga, but only in five cases with nita kal-ga; all five cases, however, were edited by Ozaki & Sigrist in BPOA 1 and 7 BM and Yale texts with no image documentation. The nita kal-ga entries have been assigned to S005898-S005899 (a-a- and a- versions), but may on inspection turn out to be S000033. Or another still: P113690 is a very poorly written text, with the impression of a defectively cut seal legend; so, an accounting school text with a throw-away seal? We can check the Free Library of Philadelphia image of the seal impression, but the potential matches BPOA 2, 2325, and BPOA 6, 481, are from BM and Yale, respectively, and therefore not subject to online inspection; thus, S005327 may or may not represent the same ancient seal. Though improved by the apparatus of partial hand copies used by recent editors of Istanbul Ur III texts in the series MVN and UTI, the Arkeoloji Müzeleri texts are comparably wanting of image support.

The new entry of seal IDs excluded all or nearly all legends that seemed too ambivalent, i.e., any incomplete legend whose possible reconstructions permitted two or more possibilities among existing entries. These, currently 1652 incomplete seal legends were tagged with the general dummy marker ‘Sx’ to enable new eyes with better analytical tools to locate them later. In one example, P133374 has now

1. lugal-za3-ge-si 2. dub-sar 3. dumu ur-{d}...,

and there are

1. lugal-za3-ge-si 2. dub-sar 3. dumu ur-{d}dumu-zi-da

and

1. lugal-za3-ge-si 2. dub-sar 3. dumu ur-{d}ig-alim

on file, so P133374’s legend remains among the undetermined seal entries in CDLI. As a second example, take the case of P332279 from Girsu with identified seal legend lugal-{gesz}gigir-re / dub-sar / dumu lu2-{d}gesz-bar-e3; here, P117739 and P141691, both from Umma, have the legend

1. lugal-{gesz}gigir-re 2. dub-sar 3. dumu ... .

While there is only one other option to choose from, it would make little sense to opt for the seal entry from P332279 since it appears to be from another province. Moreover, numerous possibilities for the patronymic of the other two texts exist in the Umma corpus, though currently none identified in CDLI legends (a search for “lugal-{gesz}gigir-re dumu” in CDLI results in giri3-ni, szesz-kal-la, lugal-ma2-gur8-re-ke4, bar-ra-an, ur-{d}isztaran, lugal-nig2-lagar-e, ur-sukkal, ur-li, ur-nigar{gar}, and lugal-kisal, all as fathers listed in the body of the accounts, exclusively in Umma texts).

Distinguishing uszur3 from uszur4, that often correspond to different glyphs in the inscriptions (including uszurx(|LAL2.TUG2|), can be vexing without image documentation; the only clear example of uszurx in a seal legend is i7-pa-e3 / dumu lugal-uszurx(|LAL2.TUG2|) / nu-banda3-gu4 {d}szara2 = S002538.

If “mu-ni,” son of Akalla gudu4 of Nin-ura at Umma, is one person, then he had (at least) four different seals:

MS 2041 (7.6×5.2×2.3) is a new recension of the so-called “Letter to the Generals.” The standard version of this letter was part of the Old Babylonian Sumerian literary curriculum, and is attested on nine manuscripts from Old Babylonian Nippur, one from Mari and one of unknown provenance. The “Letter to the Generals,” together with 17 other literary letters and four miscellaneous compositions, formed what modern scholars identify as the Sumerian Epistolary Miscellany (SEpM), and which had an established order, at least among the known Nippur schools (Kleinerman 2011: 21-2). I offer here a transliteration and translation along with a brief commentary of the new version of this letter. A hand copy will be published by K. Volk (forthcoming).

Commentary

Obv. 3: mdu-du, nu-banda3-gu4, is unattested in the Ur III corpus. In SEpM 11 the letter is from a šabra, a high ranking temple or household administrator.

Obv. 6: It is uncertain whether i7 is a scribal error based on line 5 (the interpretation followed here), or was intended to refer to the “Tumal canal” (i7 tum-ma-al), for which there are only limited archival references (e.g. SAT 3, 1845). The use of the geographic determinative, ki, is inconsistent in Ur III administrative texts, and so its absence does not pose a problem here.

Obv. 7: KA-ku5, in place of na?-ku5, is one of many scribal errors in this text.

Obv. 8: The verbal base appears to be a reduplicated form of the sign DUN written in a rather cursive fashion (see Mittermayer 2006: no. 438 dealing with similar sign forms). The verb dun, “to dig,” occurs several times in Sumerian literary compositions. In Pabilsag’s Journey to Nippur (ETCSL 1.7.8), for instance, the gods does digging work (nam-dun) in the meadows of Isin.

Obv. 9: The use of zi(d), “to be right, true,” is an orthographic variant for zi(g), “to rise,” (see the score in Kleinerman 2011: 261 with a-zi-ga in manuscripts N58, N85 and N94).

Obv. 12: One expects here the divine name dutu, but the second sign does not appear to be the sign UD.

Obv. 13: The restoration is based on the parallel line in SEpM 11: šar2-šar2 erin2 ugu-ba nu-ub-gub, “not even 7,200 troops will stand against it.”

Rev. 1: According to SEpM 11, line 16 should follow line 13. Thus, it is not possible at this time to restore line 14.

Rev. 2: Perhaps to be restored according to SEpM 11. However, in SEpM 11 this line follows our line 16.

Rev. 4: Lines 17 and 18 are not present in SEpM 11.

Rev. 5: Although it is tempting to see these as units of measurement, 1 guru7 is equivalent to 3,600 gur (Powell 1987-1990:497). It would be impossible to pile 90 gur of grain into 30 piles of 3,600 gur! For he(HI)- as a variant of he2- see Šulgi P Seg. C 37, Samsu-iluna B 22, and Samsu-iluna E 37.

Discussion

Overall, MS 2041 presents a version of SEpM 11 with many mistakes and the addition of new lines. This is in contrast to the other eleven attested versions of the letter, which are remarkably consistent. In fact, the majority of SEpM tablets do not deviate, even those that come from outside Nippur. Nevertheless, the collection is a Nippur phenomenon and the order of the compositions attested at Nippur is not attested elsewhere (Kleinerman 2011: 21-2). Conversely, there are a number of Sumerian literary letters only preserved on tablets found outside Nippur (Kleinerman 2011: 8 fn. 41).

In light of this, the presence of alternate versions of Nippur texts should not come as a surprise. Indeed, the existence of variant recensions fits well with our current understanding of the advanced Sumerian literary curriculum in Old Babylonian schools. Although by the OB period there was certainly a well established corpora of Sumerian teaching texts, individual teachers chose which to teach and the order of study. This is clear not only across southern Babylonia but within Nippur as well. In the case of MS 2041, however, it is unclear whether the teacher taught this divergent recension or the student simply improvised.

CDLN 2014:2Zsombor Földi: The Sad Story of a Sumerian Statue: The Destruction of Š&umacr;-Suen 7

In
January 1958, the Oriental Institute Nippur Expedition discovered a
door socket (exc. no. 6N-351) in the main gate of Inanna’s Parthian
level temple (L II, locus SB 53, see Civil 1989: 60). It was recognized
to have been used formerly as a grinding stone, and turned out to have
originally been the pedestal of a diorite statue, bearing the remains
of a dedicatory inscription of Š&umacr;-Suen (RIME 3/2.1.4.7, foll.
Frayne
1997). Some 44 years later, a piece of this socle has been offered for
sale–and has been sold–at a London auction. This short paper aims to
demonstrate the misfortune of this extraordinary object.

The present author is especially indebted to John Russell for kindly
providing the colour original of the image published in his book and a
permission to publish it. The collegial help of an unnamed specialist
of Bonhams, who was kind enough to send a high-resolution original of
the photo published in the auction catalogue, is gratefully
acknowledged. Both images are included in the composite one which is
made available at CDLI.

Fig. 1: 6N-351 (Š&umacr;-Suen 7)

The diorite pedestal under discussion is unique for it offers a rare
example of inscriptions, which are known both from the original
statues, and from clay tablets copied in ancient times (cf. Sallaberger
1999: 12715, 169 and Radner 2005: 106-107, 2441225).
Several
statues–especially Old Akkadian ones–are known to us only from
descriptions written by Old Babylonian scribes, who copied the
inscriptions, sometimes giving their exact location on the statue as
well (cf. Edzard 1980: 64-65, Braun-Holzinger 1991: 281-290, Radner
2005: 244-250 and Hallo 2006: 188-191). As for the Š&umacr;-Suen 7
inscription, it has been preserved on a Nippur tablet (see Frayne
1997:
314 with earlier literature, add Krebernik apud Attinger 2002: 130, 134
and Wilcke 2002: 295-296), containing textual parts of Š&umacr;-Suen’s other
statues (see most recently Suter 2010: 329-330) as well. From the
colophons in this text, we learn that beside the inscription on the
socle (mu sar-ra ki-gal), another one was situated on the statue’s
right shoulder, or perhaps the right side of his back (mu sar-ra
zag-zi-da-ni, cf. Braun-Holzinger 1991: 290 and Radner 2005: 118611),
which is, of course, not preserved. When archaeologists discovered it,
three parts of the socle inscription were still extant, namely lines
2-3 (with Civil 1989: 60, contrary to Frayne 1997: 314, cf. also
Neumann 1992: 389+24 and Wilcke 2002: 295), 11-19, and
20-22, the
latter two parts being divided by the figure’s left foot.

Although the socle itself was found as early as 1958, it remained
unpublished for several decades. It was Miguel Civil (1989: 60-61, 64)
who edited the text and published a photograph of it (see also
Braun-Holzinger 1991: 288 Abb. 4), which appears to have been taken at
the excavation site. Its later whereabouts are not known (cf.
Braun-Holzinger 1991: 275, Frayne 1997: 314, Braun-Holzinger 2007:
138). Surprisingly, it was found and photographed by John Russell
(1998: 206 and 241, no. 231) in a storehouse at Nineveh in 1989,
probably in May (pers. comm. 05.10.2013). Alongside with it he also
found several other artefacts of varied origins, a number of which he
recognized later as they appeared on the antiquities market between
1989 and 1998 (Russell 1998: 240-241).

The next appearance of the object under discussion is dated to as late
as the 7th November 2002, when a piece of this pedestal–bearing lines
11-19 only–was offered for sale at a Bonhams auction in Knightsbridge
(London), listed as no. 206. To judge by the new damage visible on the
new photograph (Bonhams 2002: 72-73), the looters or dealers tried to
cut out the inscribed part with a chisel but finally used a
circular saw. This practice was widely applied over the past two
decades, especially in the case of stamped clay bricks, because of
their relatively small inscriptions in relation to their original
measurements (see Brodie 2011: 125-126 on the so-called Nebuchadnezzar
Larsa bricks with clear saw marks).

In the Bonhams catalogue, the following description of this object was
given:

A section of black stone inscribed in Sumerian
Third Dynasty of Ur, circa 2038-2029 B.C.
Containing nine fully or partly preserved lines of a royal text of Shu
Sin, fourth king of the Third Dynasty of Ur, translating, ']...[...] the
monthly... in the temple of Enlil and Ninlil, Shu-Sin, beloved of Enlil,
the king whom Enlil chose as the beloved one of his heard [.....', 9¼ x
5¼in. (23 x 13.5cm.), in a presentation box with gold embossed spine
(Bonhams 2002: 72)

The estimated value was £4,000-6,000; the hammer price went as high as
£7,500. As usual, the names of neither the seller nor the buyer have
been made public. According to the auction catalogue, the object was
“formerly in a European private collection” (Bonhams 2002: 72), more
specifically, in the possession of an “UK collector” (courtesy of a
Bonhams specialist, pers. comm. 05.12.2012). To judge by the
translation, the one who made the description appears not to have been
aware of its real provenance, and also not to have known the Š&umacr;-Suen 7
inscription (cf. lines 11-12, which have been left untranslated),
although the Nippur copy’s corresponding part was published well before.

To draw conclusions, it seems reasonable to suppose that the pedestal
was originally left in some Iraqi museum or excavation building–note
that even Civil (1989: 60) took measurements from the photograph–from
which it was brought to Nineveh, and after that stolen and
smuggled to Europe. In fact, it appears never to have been given an
accession number, and is commonly referred to by excavation number.
Consequently, it is particularly difficult to determine the exact date
of the theft. The object is not referred to in any official inventory
of missing artefacts, compiled either after the First or after the
Second Gulf War. Most probably it was stolen from the Nineveh
storehouse sometime in the early 1990s.

Whenever it occurred, the sale could have been stopped by enforcing the
international laws protecting cultural heritage (see Brodie 2008:
41-43, 48-49 and 2011: 117-120), or failing all else, the 1970 UNESCO
Convention on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit
Import, Export and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property, which was accepted by the UK on the 1st August 2002 (see UNESCO
homepage), i.e., three months before the auction.

Although the first steps in the destruction of Š&umacr;-Suen’s statue took place in antiquity, the piece of the socle remained almost
intact until its theft from an Iraqi storage facility. Needless to say,
it was the ever increasing demand for antiquities which facilitated
this event and, though indirectly, also the further destruction of a
unique piece of cultural heritage. More rigorous inquiries by the auction house, including consultation with Assyriologists familiar with the corpus of Sumerian royal inscriptions, might have prevented this sale, which resulted in a substantial profit for the seller, thus facilitating similar events for the future. Now it is our responsibility to prevent them.

In 1921 Leon Legrain published drawings of 339 seal impressions found on objects recovered during the French missions to Susa. All its shortcomings aside, this publication remains the only comprehensive publication of the proto-Elamite seals. The catalog, briefly introduced on pages 1-2, lists the c. 1000 objects on which these seals were impressed. Unfortunately, a majority of the objects are referred to with numbers that have no clear referent (“1 á 620 : Fragments (fr.) d’argile avec empreintes, provenant de bouchons de jarres, de bulles, et de tablettes proto-élamites inédites.” Legrain 1921: 1).

Seal number 198 from Legrain 1921

Seal number 198 (pl. XII) in Legrain 1921 is of particular interest. Legrain’s reconstruction (according to his catalog from “AO. 512, nos 216, 5012”; but note that MDP 6, 216 does not exist), includes three identical humanoid figures: in the words of Legrain (1921: 51) “trois petits bons-homme, les bras tombants, ou tenant de petits vases”. However, a detailed study of the two best preserved impressions of this seal found on Sb 15229 (included on the photographic plates of MDP 6 with the number 4998, but never published in hand copy) and Sb 15456 (MDP 26 Supplement, 5012), first from RTI images produced in the Louvre Museum (January 2012 by Klaus Wagensonner), and later collation in the Louvre Museum (February 2013) by the author, has shown that these are not humanoid figures at all, but rather inanimate objects arranged together with other objects in a way that suggests a line-up of offerings.

Detail shots derived from RTI image of Sb 15229Please note: GIF-animated files can be viewed in the online version only!

The object has a slight resemblance to a stylized date-palm with two date-clusters, one on each side. As such it is comparable to a number of similar objects on this and other proto-Elamite seals that appears to represent offerings of produce lined up next to animal figures (see for example Sb 06395 [MDP 6, 206] or Sb 06397 [MDP 6, 240]).

Whereas this correction may seem of minor importance (for the sake of completeness it should be mentioned that Delaporte in his 1920 catalog of the cylinder seals in the Louvre did not identify the shape discussed above as a humanoid, see Delaporte 1920 seal number 344), it is in fact critical in establishing the fact that the glyptic art of the proto-Elamite period was entirely free of depictions of the human body or parts thereof. The only remaining exception known to me is seal number 222-223 in Legrain (number 930 in Amiet 1972). For a discussion of that seal see Dahl 2005b: 106-107, suggesting that either (a) it was an heirloom seal as it is found exclusively on tablets that can likely be assigned to the same early strata as Lebrun’s Acropolis 16c, or (b) that it does in fact depict animals rather than humans filling the granary. The seal impressions on Sb 06351 and 06355 were restudied and imaged (RTI) in 2013, and although the general reconstruction of Legrain can be supported it is not clear whether the being on the ladder is human or not (the sealing Sb 02027 has a similar but distinct seal impression depicting humans carrying sacks up a ladder to fill a granary, and it is possible that the reconstruction of seal 222-223 was influenced by this much better preserved seal impression).

The sealing on the bulla Sb 02027

The absence of human form in the glyptic record is mirrored in the writing system where the only two signs that are possibly depictions of human body parts are members of the suite of numerical and non-numerical signs loaned together with the technology of writing in the Uruk V-IV period, namely KURa and SAL.

Legrain’s description of the scene of his seal 198 (1921: 51) suggests that the three humans were shepherds, and identifies the lion hovering in the same register as their enemy. The complete description of the seal in Legrain 1921 reads (my translation):

Pastoral scene. Two large bulls and a goat. In the upper register, three small ‘bon-hommes’, with arms dropping, or holding small vases. They are dressed in tunics and have a large triangular head. In the upper register, a cone-shaped milk vessel and a handled bucket complete the scene. A lion walks with an peaceful air wagging its tail. He is the enemy of the herdsman.

Remembering how high ranking members of the proto-Elamite society were represented by either lions or bulls (see in particular the so-called ruler’s seal found on Sb 02801), and ridding the scene of humans we may be able to read it as a simple representation of offerings of produce (represented by the different vases and baskets in the top register next to the lion) to or by the ruler (represented by the lion), either from a specific institution represented by the bovine family in the lower register (note that the small animal drawn between the bulls is not a goat, but rather a calf), or simply produce obtained from the animals. One of the symbols in the top register is drawn in a distinct way, comparable to the way writing-system signs are drawn in other seals. Although it has no exact match in the writing system it may still belong to that world. That again exemplifies the fluid nature of writing during this formative period, where signs in the writing system could exist as non-writing symbols, and symbols, such as standards or the like, could enter into the writing system as signs for offices or households (Dahl 2012).